Access to water, sanitation, and public health services is a key indicator of quality of life, and these resources are greatly limited for the urban poor in Maceio, Brazil. Maceio, the capital of Alagoas state, is an environment rich in natural resources and culture. A sharp rise in population, new construction, and globalized business have made a marked impact on the city, since its founding in 1815. Despite development, the urban poor struggle to advance, unable to afford the new standards of modern living, including finding the means of accumulating income, the challenges of retaining good health, and seeking quality access to basic needs. Never designed for its current population, Maceio's original infrastructure is limited, and its ability to provide services to the entire community is severely strained. This field study, based on field research in 2008 and 2009, examines the type of access impoverished citizens have to resources in urban areas of Maceio looking at three critical resources: water, sanitation and healthcare. The thesis investigates whether lack of access to clean water, sanitation, and efficient health care led to population vulnerabilities to, in particular, waterborne and hygiene-related diseases, and what level of care was available to those affected by disease Using data gathering, primarily through interviews and participant observation, I was able to determine the proximal access to resources and services to the poor, and through these indicators, make connections between that access and the occurrence of disease in the population. Although the study is meant to be anthropological rather than epidemiological, this observation of the "diseases of poverty" interprets various diseases as both widespread in the studied population, and a product of social inequality. The imbalance of access uncovered during my fieldwork illuminates the growing concern in public health that unnecessary suffering and premature death, typically among the poor, still exists in modern Brazil. Inequality among those who greatly need services is rampant, yet the developing nation concentrates its expenditures on alternate priorities.

Vols. for 1963- include as pt. 2 of the Jan. issue: Medical subject headings.

Celebrated as a major work since its original publication, The Sanitation of Brazil traces how rural health and sanitation policies influenced the formation of Brazil's national public health system. Gilberto Hochman's pioneering study examines the ideological, social and political forces that approached questions of health and government action. The era from 1910 to 1930 offered unique opportunities for public health reform, and Hochman examines its successes and failures. He looks at how health became a state concern, tying the emergence of public health policies to a nationalistic movement and to a convergence of the elites' social consciousness with their political and material interests. Politicians weighed the costs and benefits of state-run public health versus the burdens imposed by disease. Physicians and intellectuals, meanwhile, swayed them with warnings that endemic disease and official neglect might affect everyone--rich and poor, rural and urban, interior and coastal--if left unchecked. The book shows how disease and health were and are associated with nation-state building in Brazil.

The 2002 edition of this quadrennial publication presents a regional analysis of the health situation and trends in the Americas region, as well as for each of the 47 countries and territories in the region. It is published in two volumes and covers mainly the years from 1997-2000. This edition focuses upon the inequalities in health. Volume One looks at issues dealing with leading health and health-related indicators, ranging from mortality and changes in life expectancy to the relationship between health and income distribution. It also considers current health conditions and trends including disease prevention and control, health promotion and environmental protection. Volume Two examines each country's overall health conditions, including institutional organisation, health regulations and the overall operation of health services.