Street people in Brazil: a descriptive study of their sociodemographic profile and tuberculosis morbidity, 2014-2019

Objective  To characterize the sociodemographic profile of street people (SP) registered on the Single Register for Social Programs (CadÚnico) as at 2019 and tuberculosis morbidity in this population notified on the Notifiable Health Conditions Information System (Sinan) from 2014 to 2018.

Methods  This was a descriptive study carried out with data from Sinan and CadÚnico.

Results  127,536 people registered on CadÚnico and 14,059 with tuberculosis notified on Sinan were included in the study. Higher concentrations of SP were found in the states of the South and Southeast regions. In the two subpopulations analyzed, there was a predominance of male SP (CadÚnico = 86.8%; Sinan = 80.9%), people of Black race/skin color (CadÚnico = 67.5%; Sinan = 64.1%) and with incomplete high school education or less (CadÚnico = 81.9%; Sinan = 60.1%). The high treatment dropout proportion (39.0%) was reflected in the high percentage of reentry and relapse.

Conclusion  Tuberculosis continues to be a serious Public Health problem that aggravates survival conditions on the streets of Brazil.

Keywords:
Homeless Persons; Social Vulnerability; Epidemiology, Descriptive; Tuberculosis