Supplementary food programme in the public health services of Ribeirão Preto city

Abstract

This investigation consisted in studying the Programme of Food Supplementation destined to under five years old children in the Public Health Services of Ribeirão Preto. Taking the health pratices as a working process, we learned how it was done and the relation happened among social actors of process (clientele and the working process agents). The empirical data were the speaches and attitudes of the subjects involved, collected by interviews and observation, and official documents. The analysis consisted of the confrontation of the data with the aspects selected: enviromental observation, dynamics and theorical foundation for the attendance and the confrontation of the data among themselves. The study showed discrepancies between the theorical conception and the programme’s operational. The enviroment presented inadequacies, the routine reduced to delivery of tickets, the relations between the agents and clientele were impersonal, intervened by conflicts related to the restraint the demand. The child is left aside by this attendance. The central offices didn’t articulate with the basic health units to establish a continuity of the proposition for the programme executation. We understand it to be opportune a reorganization as to the diagnosis of malnutrition in each reality, with participation of agents and clients of intervention strategies.