Accessibility barriers to primary care in a Pernambuco, Brazil, settlement via the perspective of peasants, health professionals, and management

Abstract

We are unable to deny the iniquities which are directly involved in the ways of being born, living, falling ill, and dying of the rural population. To analyze these people's accessibility to health care, we considered four barriers pertinent to accessibility to primary care: geography, organization, finance, and information. This study stresses the accessibility barriers to primary care which the population of a Pernambuco, Brazil, settlement faces from the perspective of settlers, professionals, and management. This is a descriptive, cross-sectional, qualitative, single-case research conducted in a Pernambuco agrarian reform settlement and in the family health unit responsible for caring for this territory. We interviewed a primary care municipal management representative and conducted two focus groups, one with settlers and another with the healthcare providers of the family health team. To analyze data, the Discourse of the Collective Subject method was used. Geographical accessibility barriers showed a distance between unity and settlement without guaranteeing transportation; organizational ones showed high user demand and precarious physical structure; financial ones, threats of new financing and precarious socioeconomic conditions of this population; and information ones revealed the scarcity of continuing education and the prejudice associated with communication gaps between professionals and settlers. In view of the numerous accessibility barriers and their consequences for the studied population, we must improve primary care adequacy to expand access to the evinced health needs.