Pilgrimages in Juazeiro do Norte, Ceará, Brazil: profile of demand for healthcare assistance and seasonality of hospitalizations

OBJECTIVE:

to describe the morbidity pattern among pilgrims and investigate seasonal hospitalization variation in periods of pilgrimage in Juazeiro do Norte, Ceará, Brazil.

METHODS:

a cross-sectional study with medical assistance data during the November 2nd 2012, All Soul's Day pilgrimage; and an ecological time series study to investigate hospitalization seasonality between 2007 and 2012; seasonal indexes (SI) were calculated.

RESULTS:

among the 377 assisted pilgrims, most of them were more than 55 years old (53.5%) and looked for medical assistance to measure blood pressure (71.1%); seasonal hospitalization increase was observed for respiratory diseases in April (SI=1.40, 95%CI 1.13-1.67), May (SI=1.21; 95%CI 1.03-1.40) and June (IS=1.30; 95%CI 1.04-1.55), and for circulatory diseases in June (SI=1.23; 95%CI 1.16-1.31), July (SI=1.15; 95%CI 1.06-1,24) and August (SI=1.09; 95%CI 1.06-1.11).

CONCLUSION:

the morbidity pattern with prevalence of circulatory diseases was compatible with the age of pilgrims; there was no increase in hospitalizations in the period of pilgrimage.

Morbidity; Health Services Accessibility; Temporal Distribution; Epidemiology, Descriptive