Acesso e qualidade da puericultura nas regiões Nordeste e Sul do Brasil.

Abstract

Infant health care is instituted as a way of tracking, through basic actions, the growth and whole development of children with actions directed to health promotion, prevention and detection of diseases. By means of that practice, it is possible to analyze the access of children to basic health care, as well as the quality of the provided service. In that sense, this study had as its objective to evaluate access and quality of the assistance in the child health care services in the Northeast and South regions of Brazil. Information from a population-based epidemiologic inquiry conducted in 2010 with 7,915 children aged one to four years, in their households located within the health care service coverage were used. In the first original article, the lack of access was analyzed considering the incomplete follow-up of childcare as the absence of the child in at least one of the seven visits recommended in the first year of life. As for the second article, the quality was assessed taking into account if all procedures and orientation expected in the health care attention for children under one year old happened. For all analysis the Poisson regression considering hierarchical model was used. The results show that children do not have the complete health care service, which suggests users do not attend the appointments or face difficulties in their access. On its turn, the best quality in infant health care attention was found in the Northeast region, fact possibly explained by the Family Health Strategy consolidation in that area.