Health in the development process: The case of Brazil

This article describes the health situation of Brazil's population, Brazil's health system, and their implications for the development process. It is shown that although there were substantial improvements in the last decades, Brazil still has an epidemiologic pattern where infectious and parasitic diseases are still prevalent. This is due to the lack of an adequate sanitary infrastructure, which is related to the country's highly concentrated distribution of income. The latter has resulted in a distortion of health expenditures, emphasizing curative at the expensive of preventive medicine.