CAPACITY BUILDING OF CHWS ABOUT CONGENITAL SYPHILIS BY MEDICAL STUDENTS AND MUNICIPAL SECRETARY OF HEALTH OF CAXIAS DO SUL

Introduction and Objectives: Brazil believes that the right to healthcare is the State’s responsibility. In this context, 20 years ago has created the Brazilian National Health System – known as Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS) – free of charge. Thus, SUS has many professionals, but one of them is very different: the Community Health Workers (CHWs) – they are people who is responsible to visit families in neighborhoods and strengthen relations between the families and the Primary Care Unit. Knowing the importance of these professionals, medical students members of IFMSA Brazil created a project with the purpose to capacitate CHWs from Caxias do Sul about a great local problem: the growth of congenital syphilis (CS) cases. Methodology: Two days of workshops to capacitate 200 CHWs. The capacitate had two moments: introducing about CS (40 minutes) and dynamic groups with CHWs and medical students to explain the folder and take douts (2 hours). This activity occurred through the association with the Municipal Secretary of Health of Caxias do Sul. Results and Conclusion: CHWs filled out a form with questions about the knowledge acquired and evaluated the quality of the workshops. “The workshop was good/great”, “the obtainment of knowledge about syphilis” and “provide preventive aspects to families assisted” was the aspects highlighted by 98%, 53% and 70,9%, respectively, of CHWs. With these results, we can say that we fully reached our goals; finally, work such as this should be encouraged because it helps personal and professional development of society and medical students.