Gastos públicos em saúde durante a pandemia de COVID-19 no Estado do Espírito Santo

Abstract

Covid-19 is a disease resulting from infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which is extremely contagious. Since the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020, the world's health systems have faced numerous challenges to contain the spread of the virus and provide health care for those affected. In the case of Brazil, in the first pandemic year, the immediate responses produced for the health situation were crossed by the political crisis that has been going on for some years, which resulted in a plurality of actions that were not always articulated, delay in financial transfers, clash policy, measures contrary to what the studies pointed out and, above all, preventable deaths. The governors played a central role in conducting the framework in their territories, which ended up strengthening cooperation practices between the public and the private for the provision of services, practices that precede the pandemic moment and are strengthened with it. In the state of Espírito Santo, state health management was already prioritizing new models of service provision within health, including hospital management transferred to OSs, services transferred to OSCIP, foundation creation, agreements with different entities, etc. Between March/2020 and February/2021, the state invested a little more than BRL 700 million exclusively for Covid-19 actions, therefore, the objective of this project is to: Analyze public health expenditures directed to the Covid-19 pandemic in the state of Espírito Santo. This is a descriptive, exploratory and qualitative study, through data collection on the portals: Coronavirus ES, Transparecia and Fundo Nacional de Saúde. The results indicate that most of the resource was applied by the State Health Fund, which directed a little more than 40% of the resource to non-profit institutions that manage hospitals in the state and/or provide services through agreements, the rest were for the purchase of services from the private sector for profit (purchase of beds), agreements, renovation of hospitals, services and purchase of consumables and equipment. The resources invested directly by the state hospitals were directed towards the purchase of services, equipment and consumables. In general, the data point to the strengthening of the health services market.