Diagnostic characterization of services providing care to victims of accidents and violence in five Brazilian state capitals

• Main Authors: Suely Ferreira Deslandes, Edinilsa Ramos de Souza, Maria Cecília de Souza Minayo, Cláudia Regina B. Sampaio Fernandes da Costa, Márcia Krempel, Maria de Lourdes Cavalcanti, Maria Luiza Carvalho de Lima, Samuel Jorge Moysés, Maria Lúcia Leal, Cleber Nascimento do Carmo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Associação Brasileira de Pós-Graduação em Saúde Coletiva
• Series: Ciência & Saúde Coletiva
• Subjects: violence; accidents; public policies; services
• Online Access: http://www.scielosp.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1413-81232006000200016&lng=en&tlng=en

This article characterizes the services providing care to victims in five Brazilian regions with high violence and accident rates. It analyzes care activities and strategies, the profile of the teams, the conditions of installations, equipment and supplies, integrated care and registration services and the opinion of health managers with respect to the needs and requirements for a better care to the victims. The sample is composed by 103 services: 34 from Recife, 25 from Rio de Janeiro, 18 from Manaus, 18 from Curitiba and 8 from Brasília. The still preliminary results indicate: lower number of services focusing on the elderly; scarce investment in preventive actions; the principal actions carried out are social assistance, ambulatory and hospital care and psychological assistance; patients received from Basic Health Units require attention of the communities and families; need for investment in capacity building programs for professionals; precarious registries, data handled manually. The wording of the National Policy for Reduction of Morbidity and Mortality from Accidents and Violence is not well-known and there is a lack of articulation among and inside sectors and between prehospital and emergency care services. Rehabilitation services are insufficient in all cities.