Brazil: Are Health and Nutrition Programs Reaching the Neediest?

Brazil: Are Health and Nutrition Programs Reaching the Neediest?
Aluísio J. D. Barros, Cesar G. Victora, Juraci A. Cesar, Nelson Arns Neumann, and Andréa D. Bertoldi
Social inequalities represent a major problem in Latin America. As pointed out in Human Development Report 2003 (UNDP 2003), of the 12 countries that
rank highest in income concentration, 6 are in Latin America. (The other 6 are in Africa.) The Latin American countries with the greatest income inequality are Brazil, Nicaragua, Honduras, Paraguay, Chile, and Colombia, in descending order of their Gini coefficients, which range from 60.7 to 57.1.
Health inequalities are recognized by the Pan American Health Organization as “the leading health problem” in the Americas (PAHO 1998).
Reducing such inequalities is not a simple task, however. Knowledge about the impact of health interventions on the inequalities is imperfect, and some
interventions may actually increase inequalities instead of reducing them (Victora and others 2000)./.../