1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910812825803321

Autore

Jerome Jessica Scott

Titolo

A right to health : medicine, marginality, and health care reform in northeastern Brazil / / by Jessica Scott Jerome

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Austin, Texas : , : University of Texas Press, , 2015

ISBN

0-292-76663-7

Edizione

[First edition.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (192 p.)

Collana

Louann Atkins Temple women & culture series ; ; book 37

Disciplina

362.10981

Soggetti

Health care reform - History - Brazil

Medical care - Brazil

Medical policy - History - Brazil

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Pirambu : historical and contemporary accounts of citizenship in a favela -- A history of welfare and the poor in Ceará -- Democratizing health care : health councils in Pirambu -- Prescribing knowledge : farmácia viva and the rationalization of traditional medicine -- Favors, rights, and the management of illness -- Public and private medical care for a new generation in Pirambu -- Conclusion : a politics of health.

Sommario/riassunto

In 1988, a new health care system, the Sistema Único de Saúde (Unified Health Care System or SUS) was formally established in Brazil. The system was intended, among other goals, to provide universal access to health care services and to redefine health as a citizen’s right and a duty of the state. A Right to Health explores how these goals have unfolded within an urban peripheral community located on the edges of the northeastern city of Fortaleza. Focusing on the decade 1998–2008 and the impact of health care reforms on one low-income neighborhood, Jessica Jerome documents the tensions that arose between the ideals of the reforms and their entanglement with pervasive socioeconomic inequality, neoliberal economic policy, and generational tension with the community. Using ethnographic and historical research, the book traces the history of political activism in the community, showing that, since the community’s formation in the early 1930s, residents have consistently fought for health care services.



In so doing, Jerome develops a multilayered portrait of urban peripheral life and suggests that the notion of health care as a right of each citizen plays a major role not only in the way in which health care is allocated, but, perhaps more importantly, in how health care is understood and experienced.