Dados do Trabalho

Título

Spatial clusters of scorpion accidents incidence in the State of Bahia: Retrospective study of reported cases from 2007 to 2022

Introdução

Scorpionism is a serious public health problem in tropical countries due to the complications caused by venom and, above all, the increasing number of reported cases. The northeastern region presents a high incidence of cases, especially the state of Bahia, characterized by diverse scorpion fauna.

Objetivo (s)

The objective of this article was to analyze the incidence of scorpion-related injuries in the municipalities of Bahia from 2007 to 2022.

Material e Métodos

The number of cases was obtained from publicly available data provided by the Ministry of Health, and population data per municipality were based on the 2010 census from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics. Descriptive analysis of the data was performed in Excel 2018, local spatial autocorrelation (LISA - Local Index of Spatial Autocorrelation) calculation was done using GeoDA 1.2, and the spatial distribution of annual incidences was generated using QGis 3.22.

Resultados e Conclusão

The year 2019 recorded the highest number of cases (20,912) of the 201,261 notifications of scorpion stings in Bahia during the study period. Among the 417 municipalities in Bahia, four did not report any scorpion-related injuries: Aramari and Novo Triunfo, located in the northeastern mesoregion of Bahia, and Muniz Ferreira and Varzedo from the metropolitan mesoregion of Salvador. LISA indicated two regions with strong local spatial association. The far western mesoregion, composed of 24 municipalities, includes the 10 municipalities with the highest incidence. The central-southern mesoregion of Bahia, with 118 municipalities, had 44 municipalities with high incidence. In the southernmost cluster, 95% of the municipalities had low incidence compared to the median incidence of the state. However, in the central-southern cluster, in four different years, it represented 5% of the municipalities with high incidence compared to the state median incidence. This mesoregion is characterized by three different biomes (Cerrado, Caatinga, and Atlantic Forest) and its economy is based on the agro-industrial complex. Therefore, a better understanding of the impact of epidemiological, environmental, and anthropic pressure variables depends on a detailed analysis of their relative contribution to scorpionism incidence in this region.

Palavras-chave

Venomous animals; Epidemiology; Distribution; Local Covariation; Spatial Autocorrelation.

Agradecimentos

CAPES for funding the scholarship; the State University of Feira de Santana (UEFS) for infrastructure and support.