Conhecimentos e práticas relacionadas aos efeitos do zika vírus e às recomendações governamentais oficiais em resposta à epidemia entre mulheres do Nordeste brasileiro: pesquisa qualitativa

Abstract

At the endo f 2015 and beginning of 2016, the Brazilian Northeast experienced difficult days with the advento f the Zika Virus – ZIKV. It was the emergence of something unprecedented, many children being born with microcephaly, a visible and shocking chracteristic, without na clarified etiology. In this contexto, the Ministry of Health, in an emergency, released recommendations, through a campaign with information, suggesting behavioral changes to the population. The objective was to explore women’s knowledge and practices associated with exposure, use, feasibility and usefulness of the recommendations of the Zika vírus response program in Brazil. This work is a formative study, with a qualitative approach, of Rapid Ethnographic Assessment, from a cohort with a population of 53 women between 15 and 39 years old. The interviews were carried out from July 2017 to January 2019, in the public and private networks of Fortaleza-CE, Brazil. The interview were semi-structured, based on a guide with recording of study observations in a field diary. The material was transcribed and compiled into thematic axes for analysis. The study was approved by the Ethics Committee in Research with Human Beings under protocol number 2,108,291. The results show a profile of women with na average age of 26 years, born in the city of Fortaleza, brown, married, on average with one child, complete high school, developing some paid activity. The participant’s speeches point out that the women showed a lack of knowledge about the effects that Zika can have on the baby during pregnancy. And also that the health education campaign initially took place in order to frighten the population, through images of children committed with the congenital Zika virus syndrome, then the recommendations suggested behavior changes that were unfeasible for most women, being possible to identify the ineffectiveness of the recommendations of the Zika response program in Brazil. The presente study collaborated with the understanding and investigated the reasons why women practiced or not the recommendations made by the Ministry of Health, providing information for future health promotion interventions.