Primary health care in leprosy, assessed by users and professionals

Objective: Evaluate the performance of primary health care in control of leprosy in Teresina, Brazil from the perspective of users and professionals. Methods: This cross-sectional, descriptive study involved 25 healthcare users with leprosy and 34 professionals (physicians and nurses) working in 13 municipal health units within the urban area of Teresina. The data were collected from January to June, 2017, using the Instrument for Assessing the Performance of Primary Care in Leprosy Control Actions, a document based on the Primary Care Assessment Tool/PCATool Brasil which measures the presence and extension of essential and derived attributes from primary health care. Results: The mean scores obtained for the essential, derived and global attributes, through the perception of the users, were lower than 6.6, indicating that the primary health services in Teresina are not sufficiently oriented to carry out leprosy control actions, mainly in terms of access, integrality of services provided, family orientation and community orientation. The professionals showed a contrasting view, with averages exceeding 6.6 for all attributes and scores. The difference in perception between the groups was significant for all attributes except for coordination (Mann-Whitney U test, p = 0.479).The overall evaluation of quality was not influenced by the user’s clinical or socioeconomic variables, but  rather by the organization/provision of services. Conclusions: The municipal health units within the urban area of Teresina must be strongly guided by primary health care attributes in order to reach higher levels of user satisfaction.