O cuidado ao recém-nascido em uma comunidade quilombola

Abstract

Introduction The care to the newborn (NB) must be seen in its totality and integrated to social, cultural, environmental and familiar aspects – with the family as the first unit of care in health assistance to its members and societies. Quilombo can be defined as a hideout, village, town or group of towns that sheltered fugitive slaves. The study aims to describe the home care provided to the newborn in a quilombo from Bahia. To unveil the state of the art on the theme, a literature review that crosses three main themes was performed, named as: care in the process of human development; care of the newborn; and health context of quilombola communities. As methodology, a descriptive and exploratory research with qualitative approach that took place at the quilombola community of Praia Grande of Ilha de Mare – Bahia was chosen. The collaborators were 08 mothers and 01 father of newborns or infants up to 12 months, who took care of them, in the neonatal period, using the saturation criterion for delimitation of the participants. For information collection, a semi-structured interview and the field diary were used. The data analysis was outlined through content analysis of Bardin (2000). All ethical aspects were respected according to the resolution 466/12 of the National Council on Health, and it was initiated after the approval of the original project, by the Ethics Committee directed by the Platform Brazil. The results made possible to identify the care given to newborns related to the first care provided by the mother, with feeding, umbilical stump, hygiene, sleep and rest, and identify the beliefs and taboos. Some of these practices expose the NB to health risk. The final considerations of the study shows that the quilombola community still preserves some cultural cares to the newborn; the importance of reflection on the theme of care and the complexity of the connection of scientific knowledge to promote the health of the newborn, without it interfering with the culture of the community studied.