Questão 36

Health care $\in B$razil

SIR – Your article on reforming Brazil’s Public Unified Health System (SUS) did not elaborate on what kind of reforms are appropriate, given its successes (“An injection of reality”, July 30th), SUS familyhealth teams provide comprehensive primary-care services that cover more than 55% the population, including poor people who live $\in$ remote rural areas or urban slums. Research has shown that increasing the coverage of family-health teams by 10% resulted $\in a4.5$% decline $\in$ infant mortality. This and other evidence led the British Medical Journal to describe Brazil’s family-health programme as, “A cost effective success that higher income countries could learn from.”

There is no question that innovative solutions are needed to modernize the Brazilian health system, to make it more efficient and better organized. Improving hospital administration is surely one possible reform that patients hope for. Nonetheless, the best “injection of reality” is to expand health-care  delivery and improve accessibility.Diego Victoria, Felix Rigoli; Renato Tasca. Pan American Health Organisation – World Health Organisation Brazil-Brasilia

(adapted from: The Economist – September2nd – 2011)

Choose the CORRECT alternative according to the text: