Saúde e pobreza urbana

Abstract

Next June, Recife will host the 1st Brazilian Workshop on Health in Subnormal Urban Agglomerates, the new term used by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) to refer to the socioeconomically disadvantaged territories and populations situated on the peripheries of large-and medium-sized cities, previously known as favelas, slums or shantytowns in the sociological literature in Latin America. This pioneering event will occur (and this is the main reason for it) in an historical, political, demographic and epidemiological context that is highly characteristic and very important. Last year (2012), for the first time in human history, the urban population of the planet outstripped the rural, concluding the process of migration from the countryside to the city that became a characteristic of the advent of the Industrial Revolution and speeded up significantly in the second half of the past century. Sociologists, anthropologists and economists have closely followed this process, which, although driven primarily by internal migration, is complemented, to a significant extent, by the vegetative growth of the urban population itself. In clear contrast to the approaches adopted by the social sciences, health sciences have accorded less importance to the implications of the process of urbanization on health and disease. There can be no doubt that the 2012 United Nations mobilization, by way of the Fund for the Protection of Children and Adolescents, represented, above all, by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), is producing a new global interest in slum-dwellers. In a broader more international context, the United Nations has already agreed, in its so-called Millennium Goals (2000), to direct international efforts towards reducing the misery that is especially heavily concentrated in urban settlements, and which is directly connected with the poverty that holds sway in the rural parts of less developed countries. This means, by way of commitment to joint action, tackling the problem of unemployment and underemployment, of ethically unacceptable occupations, such as prostitution or drugs dealing, as well as controlling various forms of violence, dealing with the two main facets of sanitation (drinking water and sanitary sewerage), and addressing the issues of cramped and insalubrious dwellings, the lack of basic public services and, even, in extreme situations, the absence of the State as a political and institutional representative of society. These are situations in which organized crime often takes on the functions of the State, as a virtual parallel government, with armed (and often rival) groups under the command of factions that maintain a climate of constant violence. This is, in fact, an ecosystem that is different in terms of its origins, structures and roles, organized and functioning as a political and social ghetto within the urban spaces created by social exclusion. This is a situation that is of concern not only to Brazil but to the whole world, with its disparities, intersecting in...