MEDICINE AND HEALTH CARE

Brazil has long had a public health system, but like other social programs that primarily serve the poor, it is vastly underfunded. In the early 1990s, per capita spending on health care was only about $50 annually, a paltry sum for a system on which over 60 percent of the Brazilian population depends. Many of the poor either self-medicate or get whatever remedies they can from local pharmacists who are the only health care providers in some rural areas. For those who can afford it at the other end of the social spectrum, Brazil has world class health care in modern medical centers, particularly in the prosperous Southeast and South.