Primary health care policies: investigation on morbidity

The purpose of this article is to investigate the impact of primary health care policies on infant morbidity and mortality, by using as health indicators the number of infant hospitalizations and infant mortality rates, respectively, in Brazilian cities. Our sample comprises towns and cities in the South-East of the country, where there is some controversy about the impact of the Family Health Program on mortality for the 19992003 period. We found that the preventive health care model did achieve its goal of reducing hospitalizations and mortality rates in municipalities without hospitals, and to some extent, achieved its goal in municipalities with hospitals.