Análise e projeção da salubridade ambiental com base em planos municipais de saneamento básico

Abstract

This paper presents a simplified methodology for assessing the environmental health conditions of the municipalities through an Environmental Health Index, which considers the level of attendance of basic sanitation services, as detailed in its municipal basic sanitation plans, encompassing both the urban and rural areas. The study made an assessment of this methodology in ten municipalities of the state of Ceara, Brazil, with populations ranging from 7,000 to 265,000 inhabitants. The results showed that rural areas consistently show health levels lower than those of urban areas, 10% of municipalities classified as unhealthy, 50% of low health and 40% of average health. It was found that the larger the municipality, the better the environmental health. It was also observed that the existence of Integrated Rural Sanitation Systems (SISAR) was a relevant factor for the environmental health classification of smaller munici-palities. Another striking result was that only from a medium-term planning horizon (20 years) the municipalities can achieve healthy condition. Combining the data from this study with previous studies, it was possible to obtain a general correlation to describe the Environmental Health Index as a function of the population of the municipalities. Extrapo-lating this correlation to the 184 municipalities in the state of Ceara, one can infer that the vast majority of municipal-ities (84%) was classified as low health. Finally, the proposed methodology can serve as a tool for prioritizing sanita-tion programs according to the Environmental Health Index, as recommended by the National Sanitation Plan (PNSB).