Abstract
The study of a measles epidemic in the Ribeirão Preto region, in 1984, showed a high proportion of cases occurring among people above 15 years of age. This finding led to the identification of a particular characteristic of the disease's distribution in the area, i.e. the high incidence among rural workers (especially those restricted to collective lodgings when working in agricultural and industrial activities related to sugar cane plantations). A methodological exercise of synthesis between the descriptive phase of the traditional epidemiology and the was carried out. This procedure aimed at incorporating some aspects of the social process of the area with a view to explaining this particular distribution of measles as a result to that social process (i.e. the pattern of the occurrence of measles among rural workers is understood as a historically determined social event). Finally, the need to consider the appearance of specific diseases in different human groups according to the social process into which they are inserted in disenssed in such a way that their history and specificity are taken into account.
Highlights
Panum dizia em 1846, no seu clássico "Observations made during the Epidemic of Measles on the Faroe Islands in the year 1846"13 que measles is a disease so generally familiar and so almost trivial as to warrant the supposition that observations in regard to it could offer nothing new, excepct in special cases with more or less rare complications
The study of a measles epidemic in the Ribeirão Preto region, in 1984, showed a high proportion of cases occurring among people above 15 years of age
This finding hed to the identification of a particular characteristic of the disease's distribution in the area, i.e. the high incidence among rural workers
Summary
À época trabalhávamos junto ao Sistema de Vigilância Epidemiológica do DRS - 6 e desenvolvíamos pesquisa de mestrato no Departamento de Medicina Social — Faculdade de Medicina de Ribeirão Preto da Universidade de São Paulo(FMRP/USP).Da confrontação dessas duas atividades, pareceu-nos que o "serviço" e a "academia" transitavam por espaços de difícil conciliação no enfrentamento do mesmo objeto teórico-prático: a ocorrência da doença na população. A epidemia exigiu um conhecimento imediato sobre o modo de sua ocorrência em relação ao tempo, ao lugar e às pessoas, de forma a orientar as medidas de controle; e, pela particularidade de também atingir um grupo social específico — trabalhadores rurais da lavoura de cana —, sinalizou na direção de um referencial interpretativo que ultrapassasse os limites das evidências imediatas geradas no âmbito da metodologia epidemiológica tradicional.
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