Translate AMICOR contents if you like

Friday, November 13, 2009

Brazil: Pimary Care

Brasil

Contents

BRAZIL IN NUMBERS1

  • Life expectancy (both sexes, 2006): 72 years
  • Gross National Product per capita (PPP in international $, 2006): 8700
  • Per capita total expenditure on health (PPP in international $, 2005): 755
  • Number of physicians (per 10 000 population, 2005): 12

BRAZIL’S HEALTH CARE REACHES OUT TO THE PEOPLE2

  • 70% of population receives free health care from public system
  • 27 000 family health teams are active in nearly all Brazil’s 5560 municipalities
  • Each family health team serves up to about 10 000 people, teams include doctors, nurses, dentists and other health workers
  • Community members provide feedback on health services

Dr Maria das Graças Vieira Esteves admits that at first she was not a believer. But after 11 years as a director of one of Brazil’s health clinics she has no doubts.

“Initially, I did not believe the Family Health Programme could be effective, but gradually I saw they were doing marvellous work and getting results,” she says.

Over the past two decades, Brazil has worked hard to put into practice the 1978 Declaration of Alma-Ata and its goal of achieving health for all by means of a primary health care approach.

Brazil’s vision of a system providing ‘health for all’ emerged towards the end of the military dictatorship that started in 1964 and during the years of political opposition that was to a large extent framed in terms of access to health care.

HEALTH CARE IS A HUMAN RIGHT IN BRAZIL

This struggle culminated in the 1988 constitution, which enshrined health as a citizens’ right and which requires the state to provide universal and equal access to health services for all of the country’s 190 million people, regardless of their ability to pay.

No comments: