Instituições de longa permanência para idosos: interface com a política de saúde no Espírito Santo

Abstract

The increase in life expectancy and population aging are allied to the growth of various demands of the elderly population. It is common for elderly people to be more susceptible to chronic degenerative diseases, which can lead to disability and loss of autonomy. Long-stay Institutions for the Elderly (ILPI's) emerge as an alternative to host especially those elderly people who have broken family and community ties and have difficulties in performing daily activities. It is observed that the state's lack of responsibility in the offer and execution of public policies directly reflects on the ILPI's, and, historically, the maintenance of the philanthropic and religious logic of these institutions has been perpetuated as a practice, opposing the logic of law. The general objective of this research is to analyze the interface between health policies and social assistance within the scope of philanthropic and public Long Stay Institutions for the Elderly (ILPI's) in Espírito Santo. As specific objectives, we sought to verify the legislation related to health policy and social assistance; to analyze the attendance to the clinical health demands of elderly people residing in philanthropic and public ILPI's in ES; to identify the clinical demands of the elderly that give rise to the need to interface the health policy with the assistance policy and the effective forwarding of intersectoral action to optimize results; the implementation of the comprehensive health plan for the elderly in the ILPI's. This is a qualitative research, in which data were collected through semi-structured interviews with professionals from ILPI's, whose content was analyzed in the light of the dialectical historical materialist method. As a result, it was observed that, in general, the ILPI's are taking care of the health of the elderly without an appropriate structure, since there is, on the part of the health policy, that is, an accountability with the ILPI's capable of meeting the health demands of the sheltered elderly. We also detected the lack of legislation that specifically deals with the competence of health in relation to ILPI's, and how much this factor makes a more systematic interface difficult.