Healthcare access, utilization, and quality after a disaster: results from the Brumadinho Health Project

In January 2019 a dam at the Córrego do Feijão mine suffered a catastrophic failure that killed 270 people and caused extensive damage. It is unknown how exposure to such a disaster might affect healthcare utilization.

We assessed survey data from the Brumadinho Health Project, a cohort study that includes people who were exposed to the dam failure and two comparison groups: people unexposed to mining or the disaster and people from a mining community, but not exposed to the disaster. Main outcomes include any doctor visit or hospitalization in the past year, having a usual source of healthcare, having blood pressure and blood sugar checked, and being up to date with vaccinations, for adults 18 years and over. We used survey-weighted robust Poisson regression to assess differences between those exposed and the two comparison groups while controlling for confounders.

In multivariable models, the exposed group had a 15% higher chance of having a doctor visit than the unexposed group. For hospitalization and reports of blood pressure and blood sugar assessments, there was no significant difference among any of the groups. The exposed group had a 24% higher chance and the unexposed mining community had a 143% higher chance of being up to date with immunizations, as compared to the unexposed group.

There were some differences in healthcare utilization among individuals exposed to the dam failure. Continued monitoring of the situation is warranted, as the full consequences of such a traumatic event may take considerable time to unfold.