Flawed but fair: Brazil’s health system reaches out to the poor
Despite its many problems, Brazil’s revamped public health
system has brought quality health care to millions of poorer
inhabitants who were previously denied even basic care. Claudia
Jurberg reports on how primary health care is playing an
essential role. Until the 1970s, Brazilians used to joke that
they had to die before the authorities paid any attention to
them. Dr Hugo Coelho Barbosa Tomassini recalls how they used to
have a full-time “death secretary” to administer funerals in the
city of Niterói, where he was once the municipal health
secretary, but only one health unit to care for the living. Much
has changed since then. While long queues at hospital emergency
departments, beds spilling into corridors, outdated and
malfunctioning equipment and a scarcity of doctors and medicine
in rural areas remain common complaints, on another level,
Brazil’s national health system – Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS) –
has been an outstanding success. The v