A urbanização em Campina Grande e suas relações com a incidência de doenças respiratórias no município e o clima local.

Abstract

The Brazilian process of urbanization arises as a result of the capitalist model of production that determined the rural migration to urban areas. Nowadays, Campina Grande presents an advanced process of urbanization with 95% of the population concentrated in the city using the occupation of the soil in a peripheral way, what characterizes a model of urbanization from the center to periphery. The space conformations are imbricated in productive activities that rank the places and produce differentiation in social classes. The urban network is differentiated according to economic and social complexity which is altering the energy balance and producing climates that are distinguished by changes in variables such as air temperature, humidity and rainfall. In this sense, this work aims to verify the connection between urbanization in Campina Grande, the respiratory diseases' incidence and the climate variables of temperature, humidity and rainfall in the city, especially in the most vulnerable groups: children and elderly. The relevance of this study is in the contribution to understand the standard of respiratory diseases' incidence and its environmental, social and economic determinants to support local actions of public policies to promote appropriate health. The used methodology consisted of collecting data from official sites like IBGE, CNM and DATASUS, which were tabulated and analyzed. In the methodology, it was built historical series of the selected variables in the study by graphical analysis and morbidity's coefficient to establish the behavior and the correlation between them. It has evidenced that economic growth promotes asymmetry between social and economic indicators with high levels of poverty and socio-spatial inequalities remarkable exposing a large amount of the population to different health risks and increased predisposition to environmental factors and the unfair social distribution of the income. The incidence of respiratory diseases decreased during the period of the study and it was found out that the increase in relative humidity of air and low temperatures that occur during the rainy season has a high relation of seasonality in children younger than 4 years of age.