Avaliação preliminar dos efeitos da ineficiência dos serviços de saneamento na saúde pública brasileira.

Sanitation is a fundamental infrastructure service of public health promotion in a community. This article demonstrates the impacts of the lack of sanitation services on its population's health considering the costs involved in Brazil. This study is divided in two segments: 1) analysis of the number of cases by geographic region of the top 10 most expressive waterborne diseases from 2001 to 2010; and 2) comparison between the number of cases of the same diseases with the spending/investments information on health and sanitation according government sources, considering population growth in same period. The results indicate that the number of cases over the years did not suffer a significant setback as expected. This situation can be explained by the lack of adequate investment in sanitation, expressed by poor services in sewage and solid waste treatments, faulty management of urban rainwater and deficient monitoring and maintenance of public water supply installations. The inefficiency of these services directly affects the increase on health spending from waterborne diseases treatments, consequently being an unsatisfactory management model. Therefore, this study affirms the importance of sanitation as a preventive and effective way on the improvement of public health rates in Brazil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]