LIMA, R. F.; http://lattes.cnpq.br/3476554407206164; LIMA, Rubens Félix de.
Abstract:
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease that has profound socio-cultural roots, is closely
linked to social vulnerability, such as poverty, the large human concentration and extreme
misery. Moreover, tuberculosis carries psychosocial damage as the stigma and prejudice to its
carrier, which on the other hand ends up influencing to non adherence. Therefore the
objective of this research was to identify the existing social consequences of pulmonary
tuberculosis in patients who are on treatment at the Family Health Strategy in Cajazeiras,
Brazil. This is an exploratory and descriptive field study with a qualitative approach,
developed in the city of Cajazeiras, located in the state of Paraiba, Brazil. The sample was
composed of eight patients with pulmonary tuberculosis under treatment in the Family Health
Units in the urban area of this city, who match in the inclusion and exclusion criteria of this
study. The instrument used to collect was a semi-structured interview guide, consisting by
socio-demographic and economic questions of the participants and questions which were
about the objectives of the study as the social impact of the diagnosis of pulmonary
tuberculosis and treatment for the life of themselves and how they realize the work of the
professional nurse in their treatment. The socio-demographic data were analyzed descriptively
and for analysis of data regarding the goals was used the technique of the Collective Subject
Discourse from Lefèvre; Lefèvre (2005). The speeches of the people reveal social damages
attributed to the presence of tuberculosis as self-prejudice, prejudice, self-isolation and
unemployment, emphasizing it as a disease that weakens the individual both physical and
emotionally, with consequences for their social integration in their memberships groups and
the world of work. The participants in the study understand the treatment as effective, but
focused on biomedical character and medicalization, which is reproduced by professionals
who are ahead of tuberculosis treatment in the Family Health Strategy of this municipality as
nurses. Thus, tuberculosis carries several psychosocial consequences for individuals carriers,
being notorious that actors involved in TB prevention and control seek strategies that work
the same as a social problem that demonstrates, not stopping only to the medical treatment, in
order to need to minimize these social harm and that these strategies be designed and
developed in order to correct the imbalance of socioeconomic population, working the
alliance of health with another sectors, which implement public social policies and actions in
TB control.