Geoprocessing and Health

This study is based on the following hypothesis: “Is it the greater the municipality’s population, the greater the number of cancer cases?” To investigate this question it was created a map of childhood cancer cases by municipality that are served by the NGO Viver, with the goal of comparing the data with the population of the municipalities served. Using the QGIS software, the cases were superimposed on the map of Paraná to visualize the spatial distribution. In addition, comparative graphs between the population and the number ofcases were generated to verify the existence of a correlation. Due to the case concentration in the northern region of the state, municipalities outside of this area were discarded to minimize data variation. The data were equalized based on Londrina statistics, a major health hub, assuming that all city cases are treated locally. There was a variation in the results with municipalities presenting more than 8 cases above average and others 4 fewer than expected. Although more populous municipalities generally present more câncer cases, some exceptions were identified which suggests the need for future investigations to understand these deviations.