Public access to health information concerning neglected diseases in Brazil

Abstract

To weigh the data on neglected diseases publicised by the Brazilian government, the categories adopted by SINAN Net (System of Information on Notifiable Diseases/Sistema de Informação de Agravos de Notificação) between 2006 and 2008 were surveyed. In the cases of diseases where local HIS (Health Information Systems) were used, the available data were compiled from scientific publications and governmental websites. An analysis of the data available at SINAN Net showed a lack of standardisation of the included categories. Although SINAN Net is the publicised version of SINAN, it does not make information such as the date of updating/insertion of data available in real time, which represents a major limitation to the use of such data. For the information afforded by SINAN Net to be effectively used for monitoring the public health actions and assessing their impact on the control of notifiable diseases, an analysis of the database quality must be performed on a consistent basis to identify and solve the problems of the lack and inconsistency of data and the duplicity of records for the public access to information to be reliable and to place local conditions into a nationwide, situational context.