Risk Mapping of the Schistosomiasis in the Minas Gerais State, Brazil, Using Modis and Socioeconomic Spatial Data

Schistosomiasis mansoni is a disease with social and behavioral characteristics, and distributed mainly in poor regions of Brazil. From 1995 to 2005 more than a million positive cases of the disease were reported, 27% of them reported in Minas Gerais state. The objective of this work is to estimate the prevalence risk of schistosomiasis in the Minas Gerais state through the characterization of the habitat of the snail. Two approaches were used for modeling the risk, by making use of the following types of variables: remote sensing, climate, socioeconomic, and variables that characterizes the neighborhood. In the first approach a unique regression model was generated and used to estimate the disease risk for the entire state. In the second approach, the state was divided in four regions, and four models were generated and used to estimate the disease risk across state, one for each region. The coefficients of determination for these two approaches were 0.424 and 0.717, respectively.