Health is a very serious matter
The Ministry of Health is developing several programs and actions in order to assure a qualified medical attendance to the population, and these are some of them:
Fighting Against Dengue: This disease is one major problem to the public health in the whole world, and especially in Tropical countries like Brazil. During the first semester of 2001, the cases confirmed of such disease had a 45% falling compared to the same period in 2010. The amount of deaths due to the disease has suffered a 44% reduction compared to the last year’s.
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Brazilian Popular Pharmacy: It is a program created to increase the access to population to essential medications sold at lower prices than the ones found in the market. The program counts on its own network of pharmacies and with a partnership with drugstores of the private networking. Such action began on February, 2011, and it had a 194% expansion in the access to medications to treat hypertension and diabetes, and more than 17 thousand private pharmacies all over the country joined the program. In January 853 thousand patients suffering from hypertension and diabetes, and in July that number raised to 2,5 million.
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Organ Donation: Its purpose is the grant awareness to the population on the importance of the organ donation to save lives. In 2010, the amount of donors had a 15% increase related to 2009, and this represents a landmark, as the annual average in the last seven years was of 9.9 donor per million people (pmp). Such an increase is due to the strengthening of the National Transplantation System (SNT) and higher investments in the sector.
Health for Families: It is a strategy to grant a new directive in the operation of the model of assistance through the implantation of multiprofessional teams into the basic units of health. Brazil has 32,029 health supporting teams to familes, responsible by assisting more than 101 million people all over the country. Each team develops actions to promote health, preventing, recovering, rehabilitating from diseases and its more frequent consequences, besides of providing the health maintenance to the attended persons. With a qualified basic attention, up to 80% of the health problems among the population can be solved.
Brazil Sorridente [Brazil Smiling]: Program that gathers a series of actions driven to the dental health focused on citizens of every age. The Centers of Odontologic Specialties (CEOs) integrate the program offering services completely free of charge through the SUS [Unified Health System], such as endodontic treatment, attendance to patients with special needs, smaller oral procedures, periodonty, and diagnosis. Presently, Brazil counts on 866 centers whose attendances has risen from six to 25 million between 2002 and 2010.
Prompt-Attendance: Round Clock Prompt-Attendance units working as intermediary units between the Basic Health Units and the hospitals, helping to unburden emergence rooms, enlarging and improving access for Brazilian people to emergence services at the Unified Health System. They attend cases that need intermediary medical attention, such as pressure, high fever, fractures, cuttings and infarction problems, and thus avoiding those patients to be sent to the hospitals’ emergence rooms. The UPAs work seven days a week, 24 hours a day solving an average of 7% of cases.
Health for women: To increase the coverage in providing mammography to women between 50 and 69 years old, granting preventive breast cancer and cervix cancer examinations in 25 to 64 years old women and treating 100% women with precursor cervix cancer lesions are goals that are part of the Plan for Strategic Actions to Fight Against Chronic Non-Transmissible Diseases (DCNT) launched on September, 2011 by the Ministry of Health. According to President Dilma Rousseff, these goals must be accomplished along the 2012 to 2022 period.
Olhar Brasil [Brazil’s Looking]: Its purpose is to identify sight problems in students from public elementary schools, the MEC’s program Brasil Alfabetizado [Brazil alphabetizes] and among the population with higher than 60 years old providing ophthalmologic assistance and supplying glasses whenever is detected refraction problems. Such action foresees direct assistance to 44 million people involving application of approximately R$ 323.3 million during a three year period.
Fractionated Medication: It is supplied manufactured medication in special packages sold in the exact amount according to the need, thus avoiding the risk of intoxication by the consumption of the remains of the drug that remains stored at home, thus reducing the waste and saving money.
PNAN: National Feeding and Nutrition Policy that carries among others directives to promote healthy food habits, prevent and control nutritional disorders as well as diseases related to feeding and nutrition, and monitoring the feeding and nutritional status. One of the actions included in the plan is the definition of an agenda of goals with entrepreneurs seeking to suppress the Trans fat levels in the food, according to the parameters set by the World Health Organization. In August 2011, the Ministry of Health has reassured the commitment of the federal government as to the food safety aiming to reduce early deaths due to chronic non-transmissible diseases.
Controlling tobaccoism: Since 1996, Brazil counts on a federal legislation restricting the use and advertising of products derivate from tobacco whether in public or private collective sites, except in areas especially provided for such consumption provided they are isolated and ventilated. For now, seven states has laws turning the environment 100% free of smoke: Amazonas, Paraíba, Paraná, Rio de Janeiro, Rondônia, Roraima, and São Paulo.
QualiSUS: It is a set of changes that aim to propitiate more comfort to the users of the Unified Health System, providing assistance according to the grade of risk and a more effective attention by health professionals and a lower time of internment in hospitals. This contributes to save a higher amount of lives reducing damages to the health, besides of assuring satisfaction to part of the population as to the assistance received. Service of Mobile Health Care to Urgencies (SAMU/192) is part of the QualiSUS. In its operational central, the physician attends an emergence call with autonomy to classify it and to decide the destination of the patient according to information on vacancies in emergence beds of each hospital.
National Health Card: It is a tool that links procedures performed in all the Unified Health System to the Professional who performed it as well as the health unit where such procedures were performed. Through such registration, both SUS users as well as health Professionals receive a national identification number.
Human Milk Bank: Created in 1998 in a partnership between the Ministry of Health and the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), the Brazilian Network of Milk Bank is a worldwide reference in attendance, considered by the World Health Organization the one that most contributed to reduce child mortality and in promoting the breast feeding among other works developed around the world during the 90’s. Such indication has turned Brazil into a worldwide reference in breast feeding. By organizing a collection and distribution system of that product, Brazil has innovated developing a technology that allows using different features and qualities of the breast milk to treat premature babies and thus accelerating the process of recovery. The structure has 200 milk banking and 85 collection posts all over the Brazilian territory. According to the 2010 Census performed by IBGE, the child mortality rate felt from 69.12 to 22.47 deaths per thousand babies born alive in the country between 1980 and 2009. In 2010, 119,000 liters of milk were collected by the Human Milk Bank all over the Brazilian territory.
In the fight for the Health
Malaria
In order to increase actions against malaria, in 2010 was launched the Project to Expand Access to Measures to Prevent and Control Malaria in Vulnerable Populations in the Brazilian Rain Forest, whose goal is a 50% reduction in the total cases of malaria in 47 selected cities from the 2007 epidemiological data. As consequence, the amount of malaria in the Legalized Amazon had a 31% falling along the first six months of 2011 related to the same period of 2010.
AIDS
Brazil is internationally recognized for assuring universal and free access to the antiretroviral treatment for the disease – used in serum positive patients – due to the break in the patent of medications, thus allowing that 80% of such medications are used by Brazilian patients by producing them inside Brazil.
Thirty years after AIDS was first discovered, measures to reduce the damages adopted by the Brazilian government allowed to reduce from 25% to 5% the participation of users of injectable drugs in the total new infections in the country.
The Unified Health System offers services of diagnosis, counseling before and after the test, medical assistance and free access to the medications, besides of funding actions of vigilance and prevention in each state, with annual investments of around R$ 1.2 billion/year. Presently, 210 thousand people are being treated at the public network.
From 20 medications offered free of charge, tem are produced in the country as part of the Federal government policy to strengthen the national industry. With the knowledge acquired, Brazil is maintaining international co-operations in the sector, mainly with countries of the South Hemisphere. One of the major points is the installation of a factory of antiretroviral medications in Mozambique, Africa.
Brazil is deemed one of the older and committed countries in fighting against such epidemic.
AIDS and racism are the new target for the World Day for the Fight Against AIDS this year in Brazil. According to the National Program DST/Aids, the theme was chosen because it was verified that the black people was never targeted in prevention campaigns. And black people represents 47.3% of the Brazilian population, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics. Its slogan is “Aids and Racism. Brazil must live without prejudice”.
Poliomyelitis
A partial balance of the National Vaccination Campaign against Poliomyelitis point out that more than 10.4 million children were vaccinated in the first phase. Such figure corresponds to 73.92% of the targeted-public. The investment in both phases of the vaccination campaign is of R$ 46.6 million. To purchase and distribute the vaccines it was invested R$ 26.3 million and R$ 20.2 million were used to make the campaign working were transferred to the health funds of each state and city, to be used in logistic actions for the campaign. Brazil is free from the virus that causes the disease since 1989, when the last case was recorded in the state of Paraíba. In 1994, the country received from the World Health Organization a certificate that poliomyelitis was eliminated in the country.
Measles
According to a partial balance of the campaign against measles, more than 5.7 million children received the dose of the triple viral vaccine (measles, rubella and mumps) along this year (56.26%). In 2011 the vaccination campaign against measles was anticipated aiming to keep Brazil out of the possibility of disseminating the virus, since in June there was an outbreak of the disease in Europe. With the arrival of the vacations in July, the flux both of ingoing tourists visiting Brazil and Brazilian tourists going outside Brazil increased. The goal for the Ministry of Health is to perform the vaccination campaign against measles in two phases, reaching at least 95% of the 17,094,519 younger than 7 years old children.
Influenza
Up to 2012, Brazil will be self-sufficient in the production of vaccines against the Influenza virus that causes the disease called flu, thanks to Instituto Butantan, one of the major biomedical research center in the world headquartered in the city of São Paulo, SP. Besides of producing vaccines against simple flu, its factory has also capacity to produce other subtypes of the Influenza virus, such as the H1N1, the so-called swine flu, as well as the H5N1, the bird flu in an event of a pandemic. For the first time in History, a vaccine against the flu is 100% produced inside Brazil.
Premature mortality due to chronic diseases
The Ministry of Health has launched this year the Plan of Actions to Cope with Non-Transmissible Chronic Diseases (DCNT). Such plan foresees a set of measures to reduce in 2% per year the mortality rate due to diseases such as cancer and diabetes, as well as cardiovascular disorders such as infartion and stroke (AVC). Gathering actions to be performed in the next ten years is the Brazilian response to a worldwide concerning: it is estimated that in 2008, 63% of deaths in the world have occurred due to DCNT; one third of such deaths in younger than 60 years old persons.