Morbidity due to External Causes in Adolescents from a section of the Municipality of Porto Alegre

Abstract

This study searched to analyze the morbidity due to External Causes among adolescents considering the demand of the services of Basic Health Care in the Sections of Lomba do Pinheiro and Partenon in the city of Porto Alegre – RS from 2002 to 2005. The data related that the morbidity profile was collected during adolescents’ care aged from 10 to 19 years old upon their specific demand of services. The Analysis utilized the descriptive statistics by means of the software SPSS 13.0. Among the results, there were 442 adolescents who were victims of External Causes with predomination of masculine sex (64%). The domicile appeared as the main place of occurrences of this type of event (45, 9%). Among the most frequent, external causes were: domestic accidents (26, 7%), sports and leisure accidents (13, 7%), interpersonal violence (10, 9%), accidents with animals (10, 5%) and sexual violence (6, 2%). Given these data, it is for health professionals and services create actions, strategies and establishing partnerships with other sectors, aiming at its denaturalization of violence and accidents and, consequently, its solution. In this sense, the promotion of healthy behaviors and environments, considering the social and cultural characteristics, and "situations of vulnerability" of each population group, may be the focus.

Descriptors: External Causes; Morbidity; Adolescent; Primary Health Care.