National survey will map health and risk factors of Brazilians

Begins on Monday (12) data collection for the National Survey of Health (PNS), unpublished study conducted by the Ministry of Health in partnership with the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). The research, which will be based on laboratory tests to assess the health of the population, will map various diseases and health risk factors such as hypertension, diabetes and obesity.

In addition to the questionnaires, will also be part of this study to collect blood and urine, anthropometric measurements and blood pressure measurement. The collection of clinical samples will be done by professionals linked to the Syrian-Lebanese Hospital, while the interview will be conducted by IBGE researchers who are in training since the end of July.

The research begins by the states of São Paulo, Mato Grosso do Sul, Goiás, Rondônia, Roraima, Amapá and Rio Grande do Sul and in the coming weeks, will reach all units of the federation. About 20 thousand people should be subjected to tests, the 80 000 households surveyed, 1,600 municipalities. The PNS will involve approximately one thousand agents IBGE.

In total, the Ministry of Health will transfer R $ 21 million for the study, and $ 15 million for the research institute and U.S. $ 6 million to the hospital to be responsible for the laboratory tests. The analyzes made by the research also will diagnose whether the person diabetes, sickle cell anemia and analyze percentages of creatinine, potassium and sodium indicators that can reveal potential health problems of the patient. If the test results indicate a health problem, the respondent will be referred to a health facility to receive medical care.

The blood test will also bring information on the percentage of the population that has come into contact with the dengue virus. Serology is important to support in the future deployment of the vaccine has dengue in the country, allowing the mapping of areas susceptible to outbreaks of disease subtypes., Said Secretary of Health Surveillance, Jarbas Barbosa.

The material collected in the survey will be saved and will compose a database of human serum to monitor the disease in the country and made available to universities and research institutes. Secretary Jarbas Barbosa explains that the research will allow a more comprehensive and better planning of strategic actions and policies. Besides allowing us to examine the health trend of Brazilians in the last decade, the NSP provides a very detailed radiography not only in Brazil, but in regions, states, and capital within notes. According to him, it is expected that the survey is conducted every five years. The first results of this study should be disseminated in 2014.

The research is part of the Plan to Combat Chronic Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and aims to produce new information about eating habits, smoking, alcohol consumption, physical activity and factors associated with unhealthy behaviors of the population . The information will support actions to combat NCDs, accounting for 72% of deaths in Brazil.

The initiative proposes that the NSP to continue its investigations of the National Household Sample Survey (PNAD), conducted in 1998, 2003 and 2008. The NSP must also delineate the lipid profile of the population and diagnostic access to the scale of some chronic diseases (such as hypertension, diabetes, hypercholesterolemia, blood creatinine, serum salt urine) based on the comparison of objective measurements (anthropometric, blood pressure and laboratory tests) and subjective (self-reported morbidity), and other investigations. The PNS was passed in the National Research Ethics (Conep).

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