Health needs: an analysis of Brazilian scientific literature from 1990 to 2004

This paper assumes that the health services' responses to health needs were affected by the regulation of the Brazilian public health system. The study objective is to identify the health-service trends found in scientific publications. Among the 73 publications selected from the LILACS on-line database, 66 (90.4%) did not mention the concept of health needs. Those that did had a reflective stance toward the subject. Health needs as defined in those articles were similar for all individuals, not considering them as members of a social class, a circumstance that defines health-needs characteristics. The results of this study are worrisome because health care delivery has been emphasizing sickness and reinforcing classification practices, rather than enabling emancipating praxis.