Health care, including access to medicines, is granted as a citizen's right by the Brazilian Constitution through a national health system called Unified Health System (SUS). The Pharmaceutical Care Programmes of SUS are, quite often, the only way a large part of the population has to obtain...

This work is a compilation of studies produced at the Social Studies Department - Disoc/Ipea to support the elaboration of the document "Brazil: the state of the Union - 2007". Health outcomes in the last decades, health policies after 1988 and the role of the government in health care are...