Indicador de Salubridade Ambiental para Campina Grande (ISA/CG): adaptações e aplicações.

Abstract

The environmental health is strongly related to the quality of the basic sanitation services which include a water supply system, a sewage system, an urban cleaning system, a drainage system, vector control, socioeconomic variables and other specialized services and works. Those services must provide a better life quality for people and environment. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), basic sanitation is defined as "the control of all drivers of environment, which can or could cause some kind of negative effects in physical, mental or social humanity well-being. Urban Master Plans are an important tool to arrange in a systematic way all those components and for a sustainable development of cities with preservation of environmental quality in cities. Environmental indicators act as a planning helping policy makers and managers in this matter. So, this research presents an indicator (EHI – Environmental Health Indicator) for evaluating basic health conditions in Campina Grande, PB (Brazil). The start point is an adaptation of a known EHI developed by CONESAN (São Paulo, Brazil) in 1999. EHI can be a planning tool and a public environmental management tool for priority decision making related to basic health services. It should guide governmental policies and civil society in several decision making processes for a better life quality in cities. First, EHI/CG values were developed and spatialized by census track for the whole city. Second, in a validation method, two additional indicators (environmental comfort and reservoir capacity) were developed in a different scale (urban fraction). Four pilot areas were chosen based on the highest and lowest EHI/CG values for the whole city. The ISA / CG results showed a useful tool for comparing health conditions in the intra-urban area and for allowing the diagnosis of deficient areas and for identify the best infrastructures in the city. The study also have pointed out the main drivers of municipality sanitation problems: the sanitary sewage and the socioeconomic one.