Sífilis congênita: percepção de mulheres com filhos notificados

Abstract

Worldwide, syphilis affects around one million pregnant women, causes about 300,000 fetal and neonatal deaths and puts more than 200,000 children at risk. However, Congenital Syphilis is a preventable disease as long as the mother and her sexual partner’s are properly diagnosed and treated. The purpose of this study is to know the situation of congenital syphilis in the city of Santa Maria. For this, a quantitative-qualitative approach was used, through the congenital syphilis notification forms from 2016 to 2018, which were analyzed through incidence rates, profile of notified mothers and children, georeferencing and interviews with mothers, the latter analyzed from Content Analysis and Discourse Analysis. As a result, the increasing incidence of cases in the city stands out, whose majority of mothers are white, young, residents of urban areas and have elementary school. Most went through at least one prenatal appointment, had treatment considered inadequate and just over half of the partners were treated. The cases are geographically distributed in the city, without highlighting a specific region. From the interviews, it can be seen that the early diagnosis of pregnancy did not occur; some pregnant women did not obtain access to the rapid syphilis test at the first prenatal visit or to treatment at the referral unit, which can be considered a barrier. At the same time, people at points in the Attention Network, develop unique actions and creatively face different situations. They cannot avoid unfavorable outcomes because they encounter barriers in a network that cannot guarantee flows. Women tend not to recognize what they do not identify as medical assistance, part of the work and especially the actions that produce care are invisible. Place of residence, safety nets, social, economic and cultural vulnerability, unrecognized professionals and behaviors and gender issues need to compose strategies for coping with congenital syphilis.