Quality of life of women from a quilombola community in northeastern Brazil.

E N A Santos,A M Santos,M A Souza,P K A Magalhães,T J Matos-Rocha,G C Ferreira-Júnior,J G Costa,M G S Cavalcanti,S A Fonseca,R F Lima,M S Correia,J C S Santos,A P M Carvalho Neto

doi:10.1590/1519-6984.246463

Abstract

Quilombola communities are present in many Brazilian states living in precarious health conditions. This is due to geographic isolation, limitations to the access of the area in which they live in, and the lack of quality in the service when it is needed to be provided. Therefore, the aim of this study was to analyze the quality of life of women from a quilombola community in northeastern Brazil. It is an observational, cross-sectional and descriptive study. 160 adult women were first interviewed through a form to collect a profile and then it was applied the WHOQOL Quality of Life questionnaire - bref. It was observed that the women were on average 40.7 years old (±17.25), married, self-declared black, who did not finish elementary school, housewife, had no income, with their own masonry house, with up to 6 rooms, supplied by a box of community treated water. Quality of Life had median scores in the domains: physical (3.18), psychological (3.4), social relationships (3.45) and environment (2.59). With this research, it was possible to characterize the quilombola community of Santa Luzia do Norte-AL regarding the difficulties of access to health and income generation, issues that affect their health condition. The problems described in this study can contribute to health actions being planned and carried out in order to improve socioeconomic and health conditions in this community, considering the social, political and environmental context, valuing their traditional knowledge and practices.

Highlights

Quilombos are communities formed by ethnic-racial groups, which follow the criteria of self-attribution, very focused on relations with the land, ancestry and history of slavery (Durand and Heideman, 2019; Leite, 2015)
Quality of life (QL) is difficult to conceptualize and, there is no global consensus, Muldoon et al (1998) define that quality of life is not the direct reflection of the real and objective conditions of people’s lives, but of the evaluation that each one makes about these conditions, involving subjective and objective elements, encompasses many meanings, knowledge, experiences, individual and collective values
The low socioeconomic level associated with geographic isolation, together with the low living and housing conditions, is closely related to the precarious quality of life of these groups, even if these are guaranteed by Brazil’s 1988 constitution, constituting relevant factors that influence the conditions of inequality social (Amorim et al, 2013)

Summary

Introduction

Quilombos are communities formed by ethnic-racial groups, which follow the criteria of self-attribution, very focused on relations with the land, ancestry and history of slavery (Durand and Heideman, 2019; Leite, 2015). Low education and subsistence agriculture, which do not offer constant income, reflects in poor nutrition, poor nutritional status leading to a poor health, impacting the quality of life of these communities (Cardoso et al, 2018). The low socioeconomic level associated with geographic isolation, together with the low living and housing conditions, is closely related to the precarious quality of life of these groups, even if these are guaranteed by Brazil’s 1988 constitution, constituting relevant factors that influence the conditions of inequality social (Amorim et al, 2013). Basic premise of the Unified Health System (UHS, or SUSSistema Único de Saúde), a comprehensive and universal access involves the social and economic conditions of the population and not just the ethnic condition. The full and equitable access to public health services, which is the universality of the SUS has not yet been implemented in practice (Silva, 2010)

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