O acesso dos indígenas aos serviços públicos de saúde no Brasil nos últimos 20 anos: uma revisão integrativa da literatura

Abstract

Brazil has an indigenous population of 817,693 who speak 274 different indigenous languages. This number is even greater if we consider the languages of isolated Indians, among whom approximately 17.5% do not speak Portuguese. The study aimed to identify the main difficulties for indigenous people to access the public health service in Brazil in the last 20 years. An Integrative Literature Review was carried out in the Virtual Health Library (VHL), using the Health Sciences Descriptor — Health of Indigenous Populations. As a result, we found 15,173 works that were filtered by year (2002 to 2022), language (Portuguese), type (article and dossier) and that were available in full for reading. After applying the filters and eligibility criteria, 10 articles were selected that portrayed geographic and socio-organizational barriers. The study revealed linguistic barriers that create barriers to communication between indigenous people and professionals; cultural and gender issues related to male translators during women's consultations; financial difficulties to travel to the services; long distance between village-hospital; poor service; food divergence between the service and the village offer; difficulty of health professionals in locating villages, among others. The review pointed out that there are still obstacles to the full access of indigenous people to health services, being territorial, cultural and communication. Therefore, guaranteeing investments by the three spheres of government in indigenous health, as well as the autonomy of indigenous people, are fundamental conditions for the effective implementation of the National Health Care Policy for Indigenous Peoples.