Necessidades de saúde : subsídios a crítica do pensar/fazer saúde

Abstract

The health needs of the population are not answered satisfactorily, outlining challenges of various orders to health practices. Overcoming this scenario implies knowing the needs of social groups and creating tools and strategies to meet them, which requires efforts of sciences and practices in public health.This research examines health needs in urban peripheries of a midsize city in Northeast Brazil. Anchored in the dialectical method, needs were analyzed in conjunction with their entirety, seeking clarification of mediations and contradictions involved.Semi-structured interviews were conducted with residents,besides field observations, questionnaires, as well as documentary research. They evidenced five sets of needs: need for biomedical products and services; need for money to consume biomedical products and services; need for healthy food; need for healthy habits; and need for good interpersonal relationships with employees of health services.Although grouped together, those needs are singular to the individual and collective lifestyles, woven into a web that articulates social, political, cultural, economic, scientific and media actors; and reveal contradictions that are mostly unfavorable to meet the health needs and a process of social reproduction that is strongly targeted to the accumulation of capital.Health needs are multidimensional,they assume diverse forms and contents, according to the specificities of life and health of individuals and groups. For their recognition, they require methodsenrolled in different research traditions, being only partially captured by the epidemiological indicators traditionally used in health systems.