Health assistantship policy at São Paulo’s First Republic: an analysis of the government’s budget plan

Abstract

This study analyzes how São Paulo state government promoted public assistantships policies during the First Republic. During this time, the government aimed at controlling epidemies and endemics, leaving individual care to private institution. Through budget plans, reports from the Secretary of Interior, speeches at the Chamber of Deputies, and newspaper articles, we observed that there was a budget policy which allowed the government to spend money on institutions that assisted immigrants and poor people. Besides an annual expenditure, the government could also send extra budget during epidemics, and also developed periodic inspections to evaluate the sanitary conditions of the subsidized institutions. The document’s analysis showed that the resources spent were high in value, almost as much as the one available for Sanitary Service, a public organization created in order to fight infectious diseases. The state also used the same system to install its own structures used to fight diseases like trachoma and hookworm in 1906. However, in a time when the main discourses asked for public dispending reduction, the high costs to upkeep these institutions made them to be shut down. The government, thought, kept the old system, sending resources to philanthropic and private hospitals.