Medical consultation in productive age population related with air pollution levels in Bogota city

摘要

Bogota, capital city of Colombia, has a population that exceeds 7 million people and 1.2 million vehicles approximately. The city is located at 2,600 meters above sea level and has an intermediate contamination level mainly due to air pollution. There is a mountains belt around the city that affects the pollutants dispersion and sometimes the meteorological conditions make this process even more difficult. This study pretends to estimate the relationship between the various medical consultation motives from the population in working age (15-65 years old) at public hospitals with city's air pollution levels, to motivate a deeper epidemiological monitoring. Public hospitals attend approximately one sixth of the total demand, i.e. 20% of the city's total inhabitants. To organize the consultation motives, the international code of diseases ICD was used and a total of 748,405 consultations were processed. 67% were from women, while 42.2% were patients younger than 30 years and 20.5% were older than 50 years. Even though the distribution is similar for 17 categories of the ICD-10, there was a high incidence of consultations related to respiratory and circulatory system, as well as disorders which compromise skin, eyes and other sense organs. These symptoms are correlated with air pollution in scientific literature. Such results show that an important portion of the medical consultations generated in Bogota is related with the city's air quality that has been worse because an increase in vehicles number and public works in main streets. It suggests that controls must be intensified and strict vigilance is required on the effects on the population's health.