The Health Services in Rio de Janeiro in the 80’s and 90’s Last: Change, Continuity and New Demands on the Administration of the Same

Abstract

From a general description of the model in use for the administering of these services, the paper goes on to
examine the links between the model for funding these in the 80’s and 90’s and social and spatial segregation
as among the metropoli. Although admitting an overall improvement in access to such services, funding is
nevertheless here shown to promote and reinforce existing inequalities by concentrating spending in areas
inhabited by elite sectors of the population. Against such a tendency, the paper examines the alternative
possibilities to this state of affairs offered by structuring focused upon local municipal administration to
guarantee access to such services for all, in so doing closely examining local governments capacity to assume
responsibility for running them along with those cases in which a transfer of them has been made and the
regulating structures that are being set up to govern such an assumption of responsibilities.To the foregoing
the paper also offers grounds for thought upon the new demands now made for a public regulation of the health
sector in keeping with an politically acceptable awareness of Social Justice requirements.