[Cidade Leonor slum, São Paulo. III. Environmental contamination and natural feeding practice]

In this study the authors report the high rate of environmental contamination to which children living in slum areas are exposed. The authors performed a bacteriologic and parasitologic survey in children with acute diarrhea and in controls. Feeding habits were also recorded. The feeding habits revealed that 176 out of 520 children (33.8%) were never breast fed, whereas the remaining 344 (66.7%) were breast fed for an average of 2.2 months. The parasitologic survey was positive in 89% of the stool samples obtained from 83 children, mostly with multiple infections. The bacteriologic survey revealed the presence of enteropathogens and, in particular, invasive E. coli and Campylobacter in 46.7% of the children with acute diarrhea, and in 32.5% of the children in the control group. These findings allow the authors to state that environmental conditions of slum areas directly predispose to the appearance of the diarrhea-malnutrition binomial.