This study discusses the urbanization of schistosomiasis in the Greater Metropolitan Area of Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil. The observation that schistosomiasis has become endemic in an urban area is discussed using the concept of social organization of space as an exercise in providing an operational basis for the social and environmental paradigms of collective health. Elements from the new world economic order are discussed: the concept of socially constructed space, the internationalization of capital, the periphery, and the resulting collective disease generation process. Due to the deterioration of state health services and the logic of the new world economic order, the need for local schistosomiasis control solutions is stressed.
Schistosomiasis; Urbanization; Epidemiology; Public Health