Poverty, outer city and cultural diversity: health challenges

Abstract

Poverty, outer city and cultural diversity make up an extremely complex context, challenging health services in their interaction with the poor population. On one hand population is studied as a phenomenon which needs to incorporate proper measuring procedures to identify and quantify the size of social chaos. On the other hand, historically, the poor have been the product of constant recreations of subaltern, the translation of desires, theories and truths distant from the reality, which is shown in literature, in academic texts, in public policies, and the media in general. A rich symbolic universe and a multiplicity of popular knowledge and forms of sociability are shared in the outer city, clearly showing that deprivation is not a one-way street, bare and sterile. The outskirts appear as territories where material limitations and violence coexist with great cultural diversity, allowing the different life styles to translate the social universe to beyond the most imposing needs and structures. This is
the scenario with which the health services need to dialogue in the sense of ensuring the care and the right to health of those segments which present precarious life and health conditions in the country.