[Comprehensive primary care and segmented health systems in South America]

The article analyzes recent reforms in primary health care in the South American countries, discussing the scope and challenges for establishing comprehensive primary health care in the region's health systems. The data sources were case studies conducted in 12 countries, and the analytical lines were the strategic components in the design and implementation of primary health care: national policy approaches, characteristics of financing, organization and provision, and the workforce in primary health care. The crosscutting analysis from a comparative perspective provides an overview of primary health care in the region's countries and highlights convergences and asymmetries. A common trait is the recovery of the expanded definition of primary health care with family and community components, a territorial base, multidisciplinary team, incorporation of community health workers, and social participation. Implementation revealed heterogeneities in the advances and contradictions in the models. Insufficient supply of physicians, difficulties in provision and physician retention in remote and peripheral areas, as well as in primary health care itself, precarious employment relations, and absence of career plans are common problems, and there have been recent initiatives in government intervention to direct the workforce to the public system. Segmentation of the supply of primary health care converges with the segmentation of social protection in the various countries, through maintenance of social insurance or selective and targeted insurance or coverage by private health insurance, and persistent exclusion of populations from the right to health. The article argues that implementation of comprehensive primary health care is conditioned by the prevailing modalities of social protection in health.