Homeless people's right to health: reflections on the problems and components

Abstract

In the present context of neoliberalism, it can be seen that employment and family links are becoming more fragile, contributing to the phenomenon of social exclusion, and making people who are homeless - the Homeless - more visible. This population, situated on the margin of the healthcare network, challenges the universality, equity and integrated quality of Brazil's Unified Health System - the SUS, and has been the subject of focalizing policies. The debate on this theme is the subject of this study, which is an integrative review of Brazilian publications in the literature databases of Lilacs (Latin America and the Caribbean Health Sciences Database) and the BDENF (Base de Dados de Enfermagem - Nursing Database), to provide a survey of the literature on characterization of the Homeless as a group, their needs and the policies that have been developed to serve them. The study reveals that discussion on the homeless has been timid in production of knowledge, principally in relation to comprehension of the social determinants of the health-disease process of this group. The social policies addressing this population are, mostly, compensatory and existentialist, so that they do not allow for materialization of the right to health as a possible outcome. In this context, it becomes necessary to build social policies that are coherent with the social needs of the homeless.