Dengue in the metropolitan region of the Vale do Paraiba and Litoral Norte of São Paulo Social and environmental conditions and dynamics of disease

he dengue fever was the subject of this study due to the numerous cases of the disease that occurs annually in Brazil, a fact that shows the urge to know more about the disease spreading reasons. The countrys fast urbanization, industrialization and population growth, besides the climatic conditions and welfare levels, changes the environmental and health conditions and has favored the increase of occurrences. The newly created Vale do Paraíba e Litoral Norte metropolitan area, a high urbanized and high developed region, showed a great diversity of occurrences and incidence between its thirty-nine municipalities. This study had analyzed the dengues cases distribution considering the elevated number of the disease subjects in twelve of the thirty-nine municipalities. This paper analyzed the distribution of the dengue fever considering the water supply, sewage treatment and waste collection levels in the metropolitan area and the level of economic relevance of its cities and revealed that the latter is the probable cause of the high number of the diseases incidence in the aforementioned cities. This research has been developed from notifications of the dengue disease based on SINAN (Sistema de Informação de Agravos e Notificação), considering the first symptom notifications per year and according the home city of the patient. The information related to the Vale do Paraíba e Litoral Norte metropolitan area were obtained from the documents developed and provided by EMPLASA.