Incidence of leprosy in the Brazilian Amazon region and its analogy in relation to Brazilian municipalities: a sociodemographic analysis using Bayesian networks

Considering the importance of studying the incidence of leprosy and the scarcity of studies that evaluate the occurrence of this phenomenon in the Brazilian Amazon region in relation to the Brazil, this study aimed to analyse the association between leprosy incidence and the municipal indicators of education, income and domicile population density, comparing municipalities of the Amazon region to those of the whole country. We used data obtained on cases of leprosy in Brazil, availabled by the Information System of Hardship Notifications through the Informatics Department of the National Health Service and the socio-economic indicators found in the last Demographic Census of the Brazilian Institute for Geographical and Statistical Survey, information from the Municipal Human Development Index, regarding education and income, obtained from the website of the Human Development Atlas of Brazil. The methodology combined data mining with the analysis of spatial distribution. We found that municipalities of the Brazilian Amazon region present a high rate of leprosy incidence (65.7%); but this value declines (13.1%) when the analysis contemplated other regions of the country. Using the Bayesian network model, was a significant association between the percentage of homes with more than 2 inhabitants and the rate of incidence of leprosy.