Health on the Brazil-Uruguay border: pacts and protagonism of local actors

Abstract

This article analyzes the relationship between cross-border pacts and protocols in the area of health and the performance of political actors in two sets of twin cities that are on the Brazil-Uruguay border. The study aims to understand the role of the public health care managers and their leadership in providing services at the local level, considering binational acts. The managers of the local health care system were interviewed and among the results are the difficulties in the local materialization of the binational agreements, and the consequent stagnation in providing access to rights related to health, due to lack of leadership of the local political actors. Crossborder cooperative management models are not consolidated, which requires competence to obtain minimum consensus on controversial points when the management perspective is democratic and universalistic.

Keywords

• Cooperação em saúde
• Saúde em fronteiras
• Política de saúde
• Atores políticos
• Gestão transfronteiriça em saúde