Direito à saúde, integralidade e participação: um estudo sobre as entre sociedade e Ministério Público na experiência de Porto Alegre

Abstract

In 1988, the Constituent Assembly, following Brazil s return to democracy, finally pointed to the transformations of Brazilian social policies, whose results were expressed in the Constitution. From that moment on, for Brazilians citizenship became the fundamental statute of nationality, and health rights became a citizenship principle. In this sense, the health sector pioneered in Brazilian social policies practices. The adoption of such doctrinaire and operational elements by law where the principle of integrality stands out confirmed the health rights as an approach to suppress the fragmented structure of health services organization in Brazil. This study aims to analyze the relation between patients of the Brazilian Unified Health System (SUS) and the Public Prosecution Service (PPS), in Porto Alegre city, State of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, concerning the use of institutional, juridical and legal instruments to guarantee health rights, mainly from 2000 to 2004. The Health Councils in that city play an important historical role in formulating and supervising the health public policies. The growth of these councils has permitted them to develop new strategies (with the aid of the PPS) in the struggle for health rights. In this context, we could notice that both patients and prosecutors have been often applyed the integrality principle as a legal source to guarantee health rights. As a result, the principle of integrality has changed the logic of services offer. The PPS has propitiated more and more dialog between services managers and representatives of the Health Councils, in order to find better solutions for the citizens health problems. This space for dialog, created by the PPS, more than an advanced way to solve conflicts, contributes to the increment of democratic practices, as well of the democratic State. The synchronized action of the PPS and the Health Councils has produced new ways and mechanisms of negotiation and agreement between different fields of public government and society, institutionalizing a new civil grammar of health rights .