The authors of the WHO's World Health Report 2000 1 have placed on the WHO agenda a commitment to the laudable goals of assessing health systems, monitoring inequalities in health, and achieving equity in health-care financing. Their proposition that health services should be responsive to people's expectations is a welcome one. While these commitments should be sustained, we believe that the approaches taken toward these ends in the World Health Report are seriously flawed. We aim to suggest changes to the approach in the World Health Report to ensure that measurement strategies supporting public health policy throughout the world are scientifically sound, socially responsible, and practical.Both the conceptual basis and methodological approaches to the World Health Report composite index of health system goal attainment and its individual components, and the indices of health system performance, have major problems. Data needed to calculate four of the five component measures for overall goal attainment were absent for 70-89% of countries, but this was not acknowledged in the report. Because all the measures are new, and imputed values for the 70-89% of countries without data were based on new methods involving multiple non-standard assumptions, readers deserve to know the underlying assumptions, methods, and key limitations, which were not adequately acknowledged. The measures of health inequalities and fair financing do not seem conceptually sound or useful to guide policy; of particular concern are some ethical aspects of the methodology for both these measures, whose implications for social policy

Background: Recurrent and prolonged seizures are harmful for the developing brain, emphasizing the importance of early seizure recognition and effective therapy. Amplitude-integrated electroencephalography (aEEG) has become a valuable tool to diagnose epileptic seizures, and, in parallel, genetic etiologies are increasingly being recognized, changing the paradigmof the workup and management of neonatal seizures. Objective: To report the ictal aEEG pattern in neonates with KCNQ2-related epilepsy. Subjects and Methods: In this multicenter descriptive study, clinical data and aEEG findings of 9 newborns with KCNQ2 mutations are reported. Results: Refractory seizures occurred in the early neonatal period with similar seizure type, including tonic features, apnea, and desaturation. A distinct aEEG seizure pattern, consisting of a sudden rise of the lower and upper margin of the aEEG, followed by a marked depression of the aEEG amplitude, was found in 8 of the 9 patients. Prompt recognition of this pattern led to early treatment with carbamazepine in the 2 most recent cases. Conclusion: Early recognition of the electroclinical phenotype by using aEEG may direct genetic testing and a precision medicine approach with sodium channel blockers in neonates with KCNQ2 mutations.

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Resumo Este artigo revisa os fatores limitadores e facilitadores do acesso aos serviços públicos de saúde no Brasil na área da atenção ao câncer de colo de útero (CCU). Nesta revisão, foram utilizadas a base de dados bibliográficos Medline (interface com Biblioteca Virtual de Saúde/BVS e PubMed) e os portais Lilacs e SciELO. Buscou-se publicações referentes ao período 2011-2016, a partir do uso de termos específicos das fontes consultadas, relativos a ‘neoplasias do colo do útero’ e ‘acesso aos serviços de saúde’. Foram inicialmente encontrados 704 artigos, mas, considerando os critérios adotados, foram selecionados 31 artigos, dos quais foram incluídos 19. Foram mencionados aspectos facilitadores do acesso como ampla cobertura do exame Papanicolaou e de biopsias equivalente ao número de preventivos alterados. Entretanto, aspectos limitadores de acesso como periodicidade inadequada do Papanicolau, dificuldades para agendamento de consultas e exames, alto índice de estadiamento avançado e atrasos no diagnóstico e no início de tratamento, também foram apresentados.

UHS development and hospital services rationingDesenvolvimento do SUS e racionamento de serviços hospitalares

This was a comparative cross-sectional study among public prenatal care users in conventional outpatient health services and family health services, aimed at assessing perception and quality differences between the two models of health services organization according to Ministry of Health guidelines. A total of 203 pregnant women from 22 municipalities in five regions of the country were interviewed while waiting for prenatal consultation. Besides soliciting the women's opinions, we checked for possible advantages in innovative family care services in issues like access and commitment. Data revealed approval by users for key aspects related to care and consultation in both types of public facilities and suggest consistent primary care policies. Low coverage in dentistry (18.9%), gynecological preventive tests (39.6%), and HIV tests (52.6%) indicates policy obstacles. Comparatively, family health services received significantly greater approval by women on issues like quality of the last visit (p = 0.0432), maternity hospital access (p = 0.0106), vaccination schedules (p = 0.0023), drug delivery (p = 0.0053), blood glucose tests (p = 0.0309), nursing visit (p = 0.0469), and home visits (p < 0.0001).

This paper analyzes Brazilian health regions according to their service delivery capacity from the debate on the crisis of cooperative federalism in the SUS that resulted from decentralizing process established in the 1988 Constitution. Service delivery capacity tracer indicators were selected by regions and statistical analyses evidenced greater regional capacity in hospital care and large asymmetries with regard to the availability of physicians, high complexity equipment and private insurance coverage. In conclusion,we argue that further solutions are required to strengthen governmental capacity to reduce regional inequalities throughincreased central coordination.

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