A (in)efetividade do direito fundamental à saúde do idoso no município de Maceió-AL

Abstract

This master´s dissertation, based on the dimensions of the Brazilian population aging process – taken as an important social matter nowadays – has the scope to present an analysis concerning the effectiveness of the right to the health of the elderly in the City of Maceió-AL. Assuming that the population aging phenomenon has raised the necessity of implementation of specific public policies, which guarantee aging as a basic human right, we hereby intend to bring people´s attention to healthcare as an issue to be equated with priority, so that, for its effectiveness, all the other rights granted to the elderly, not only in the constitutional field, but also in the ordinary legislation, are to be fulfilled in the social reality. The foundation of this research will start with a brief description of the two main world-wide United Nations events regarding the theme: the First and the Second World-wide Assembly on Aging, held, respectively, in Vienna (1982) and in Madrid (2002), whose significance was to stimulate countries to the adoption of measures that assure to everyone the right to age with security and dignity and, to the aged ones, the right to continue taking part in their respective society as citizens with full rights. The analyses of the constitutional commands, both native and foreign, as well as the legal rules that guarantee the rights of the elderly also figure as theoretical basis of this study. Moreover, considering the difficulties, especially of budgetary order, continuously emerged in the debates concerning the effectiveness of the basic rights, the main theoretical postulates have been contested - “existential minimum” and “reserve of the possible” – the ones which support the conditioning or limitation of the full accomplishment of these rights. As per field research, using the techniques of the half interview structuralized and the simple observation, on the basis of the line of quantiqualitative study, there have been found the deficiency of the services of health facilities to the elderly in the City of Maceió-AL and the insensitive policies with which the relative demands to this basic right have been treated.