[Estimates of the spatial distribution of the relative risk of mortality of the main zoonoses in Chile: Chagas disease, hydatidosis, Hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome and leptospirosis].

Background: Zoonoses are infections caused by all types of etiological transmissible agents from vertebrate animals to humans. During the last decades, the risk to health caused by different zoonoses has been a consequence of the natural distribution of the different etiological agents and by the emergence and reemergence of these diseases.

Aim: To study the distribution of the risk of mortality of the four main zoonoses in continental Chile, based on national mortality data, with the objective of visualizing geographically where to focus the control efforts of these diseases.

Methods: Relative risk was estimated by means of Bayesian Statistics.

Results: The distribution in Chile of the main zoonoses was obtained.

Discussion/conclusion: The risk maps obtained show a parasitic disease transmitted by high-risk vectors in the north, Chagas disease; a parasitic disease of biological communities in which man is an accidental host, associated with livestock areas, more prevalent in the south, hydatidosis; a bacterial disease transmitted by vertebrates, especially by rodents, where water is an important vehicle, dominant in the center, leptospirosis; and a viral disease transmitted by rodents, very dominant in the south, the hantavirus infection.