We are information dealers: educational practices of endemic diseases’ battling agents at a service of zoonoses control in Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Abstract

Zoonoses have an important place among illnesses’ causes in Brazil. A historical review of governmental programs guidelines to control such diseases reveals advances, but their implementation at the municipal and state level depends on socio-environmental factors and on institutional and epidemiological characteristics. This research aims to analyze the educational practices developed by agents that fight endemic diseases (ACE) through a case study in one of Belo Horizonte’s burroughs, MG. The research involved documental analysis, two months of observation of ACE work and interviews with 16 ACE and two coordinators of the service. The region presented several environmental, socioeconomics and cultural elements associated with the occurrence of zoonoses, but these factors were not considered by ACE. The educational activities’ developed by them were based on the transmission of technical-scientific information related to the control of zoonoses’ vectors and reservoirs ; the knowledge of the population was not valued. In spite of the central place attributed to ACE’s educational activities in the institutional discourse, those actions are limited by gaps in their training process and by the organizational structure of the service and management model, based on quantitative indicators of productivity. In order to understand the resistance of the population to technical-scientific discourse and to improve ACE’s educational activities it is necessary to review the service organization and to develop a training process for them based on the multiple determinations of health-disease process, on the importance of environmental and socioeconomic contexts in zoonoses control and on participatory education.