Bevilacqua PD, Paixão H, Castro MS, Módena C. Leishmaniose visceral: historia jornalística de uma epidemia em Belo Horizonte, Brasil. [Visceral leishmaniasis: journalistic history of an epidemic in Belo Horizonte , Brazil .] Interface  Comunicação, Saúde, Educação [Interface Communication, Health, Education] (Botucatu, Sao Paulo, Brazil) 2000; 7:83-102.

Objective: To analyze the history, as presented in newspaper accounts, of the epidemic of visceral leishmaniasis that broke out in the city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, in 1993.

Methodology: Content analysis.

Results: The research analyzed three principal modes of presenting information: that of science, that of the state, and that of society. Each of the three modes conveyed its own discrete notions and thus contributed to forming an image of the disease, and the epidemic surrounding it, that appeared in the press. In this way, a reading of newspaper articles revealed another epidemic, one that developed in parallel fashion to the epidemic that occurred among the populace. This latter epidemic was expressed in writings about visceral leishmaniasis that surfaced in daily newspapers. These narratives about the disease, reflecting the points of view of the groups expressing them, flooded newspapers on a daily basis and affected common sense powerfully, on both the individual and collective levels.

Conclusions: Social communication is one area in which epidemiology manifests its interdisciplinary qualities. Opinion, conveyed to people through a mediating filter like the press, can produce and reproduce divergent representations of health and disease and thus can become an important determinant in the process.