‘Not One Health Service Less’: social movements, new political actors and the right to health in times of crisis in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Abstract

This case study approaches the course of the Not One Health Facility Less movement, at the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, defending the right to universal public health. It consists of a horizontal front, formed by health social movements, syndicates, activists, workers and users of public services. The movement uses multiple strategies, like local mobilizations, great scale protests, social networks, strikes, between others. It rises as an answer to the attacks to the Unified Health System (SUS) in the city, with cuts ate the Primary Health Care services; mass dismissals, irregularities in the payment of wages, medicines and inputs supplies on all levels of health care; in a national context of economic and political crisis, and cut of social spends. The movement is analyzed through the light of the challenges on social mobilization in times of work conditions and public services precariousness. We also meditate about the new forms of social movement organization, linking them to the course of the Brazilian sanitary reform. The synergy between the health workers demands and the defense of a strong and inclusive national health system appears as a potentiality of the movement, activating the communitarian bonds between health services and different territories.