Vulnerability and tuberculosis in Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

This paper aims at understanding social causality of Tuberculosis in Rio de Janeiro. This is one of the Brazilian states with the highest incidence of this disease. We follow the story of Paulo, a patient who received care at the outpatient clinic for multi-drug resistant Tuberculosis, in Rio de Janeiro. To make sense of his story, we will look at it through the concept of vulnerability in life conditions. Along with Sabroza (2006), we argue that this vulnerability is a collective expression of the economic insertion of a growing segment of Rio’s population in the current technical-scientific-informational capitalism (Santos, 2002 [1979]). Limitations in the health services add directly to vulnerability in life conditions of patients making treatment a hard endeavour. We propose to think and act on Tuberculosis at the collective level of reality, through intersectoral actions. We aim at contributing to the current debates on the social determination of Tuberculosis, to inform actions that can significantly reduce the suffering associated to this and other similarly caused diseases.