The sanitation of Brazil: nation, state, and public health, 1889-1930

ABSTRACT

This book endeavors to understand the formation of national public health policies through a focus on rural sanitation policies in Brazil over final two decades of the First Republic (1889-1930). During this time frame,public health moved to the top of Brazil's political agenda, propelled by a distinticvely nationalist ideology. A nationwide state health and sanitation policy was built on the foundation of this privileged position. The 1910 and 1920s affored unique political opportunities, this reform, and some of the reform's successes and failures. Its guiding questions concern when, why, and how health became public. The only other occasion in Brazilian history that presented similar prospects was the late 1980s, when the country's new democratic constitution not only declared health a citizenship right but also charged the state with its provision. The chapters presents when health become public with the state formation and health policies in BRazil; the microbe of disease and public power withthe pulbic movement and a growing consciousness of interdependence; the public health reform and the responsability for communicable diseases; consciousness converges with interests of a national public health policy; and th epolitical autonomy and public health interdependence in São Paulo.