Indigenous special sanitary district of Maranhão: chronicles of an announced disaster

Abstract

This work discuss the trajectories of health attention policies and practices to indigenous communities of the Distrito Sanitário Especial Indígena do Maranhão (DSEI-MA), of Fundação Nacional de Saúde (FUNASA). Informations presented demonstrates that FUNASA's administrations, in Departamento de Saúde Indígena (DESAI), in Brasília, in Coordenação Regional do Maranhão (CR-MA) and in DSEI-MA, has resisted to adopt real participative methodologies and to consolidate social control instruments stated by the National Health Conferences. This situation results in an institutional culture widely adverse to proposals which strenghten the capacity of mobilization and organization of the indigenous communities.