President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva launched, this Thursday (12), the Alyne Network, a restructuring of the former Rede Cegonha, which provides care for pregnant women and babies in the public health network. The goal is to benefit women with humanized and comprehensive care, taking into account ethnic-racial and regional inequalities.
The goal is to reduce overall maternal mortality by 25% by 2027, and by 50% considering only black women. In 2022, the maternal mortality ratio (number of deaths per 100,000 live births) for black mothers was double that of the general population: 110.6. Overall, there were 57.7 deaths per 100,000 live births.
Brazil wants to achieve the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) by 2030, with the mark of 30 deaths per 100,000 live births.
During the launch of the program, in Belford Roxo, Rio de Janeiro, Lula became emotional when talking about the death of his first wife, Maria de Lourdes, and his son in 1971. For the president, the death during the emergency birth was due to the doctors’ negligence.
“I came home from the hospital and found my wife dead and my son dead. Today, I am absolutely certain that it was a lack of care, that it was a lack of treatment, because poor people are often treated as if they were second-class people. And if you are poor and you are a black woman, you are treated as if you are third-class,” said the president.
“And we need to treat all people with respect, with affection, with a lot of love, because we will not create a civilized, humanly respected society if we do not treat people, regardless of their color, their birthplace, their religion,” highlighted Lula.
The new model pays tribute to Alyne Pimentel, who died six months pregnant due to lack of adequate care in the public health network in the municipality of Belford Roxo, in Rio de Janeiro, in 2002.
The death of the 28-year-old woman led to Brazil being condemned internationally by the United Nations (UN) Committee on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).with recommendations to reduce the number of preventable maternal deaths, recognized as a violation of women’s human rights to safe motherhood.
“We want to create a program so that women are treated with dignity, so that women can undergo all the necessary examinations, so that women can take all the photographs they want of their uterus to see how the child is doing, so that we can ensure that women arrive at the doctor’s office healthy and leave there, in addition to being healthy, with a very beautiful child in their arms,” said Lula during the event, which was attended by Alyne’s daughter, who was five years old at the time of her mother’s death.
Investments
Among the program’s innovations is the implementation of an integrated plan between maternity and Family Health – with qualification of Family Health teams, the main gateway to the Unified Health System (SUS) – and the expansion of the SUS Regulatory Complex with a team specialized in obstetrics.
The Ministry of Health’s objective is to integrate the network to end the “pregnant woman’s pilgrimage” and guarantee places for care, with priority given to women who need support in traveling to the maternity ward.
In 2024, the Ministry of Health will invest R$400 million in the network. In 2025, the investment is expected to reach R$1 billion. There will be a new financing model with a more equitable distribution of resources to reduce regional and racial inequalities; financing will be based on live births, place of residence and municipality of care.
The government will also triple the amount of funding for states and municipalities to perform prenatal exams: from R$55 to R$144 per pregnant woman. New exams will be incorporated into the network, in addition to those already included in the Rede Cegonha, which will now have rapid tests for HTLV, hepatitis B and hepatitis C.
The budget expansion also extends to medium and high complexity care for the structuring of specialized teams in maternal and child care, with 24-hour, seven-days-a-week coverage, in the regulation of the Mobile Emergency Care Service – SAMU 192.
The Alyne Network will provide new funding with a monthly cost of R$50.5 thousand for ambulances used to transfer pregnant women and newborns in critical conditions. “This will help reduce delays in travel at critical times,” the government explained.
New maternity wards
Through the New Growth Acceleration Program (PAC), in the Health area, 36 new maternity hospitals and 30 new Normal Birth centers will also be built, totaling R$4.85 billion in investment in the selection stage, with priority given to regions with the worst maternal mortality rates.
Brazil’s milk bank network, which is an international reference and will have a “more complete system” to encourage breastfeeding.
The Ministry of Health will invest R$41.9 million per year in a new transfer to increase the availability of breast milk in neonatal units, in addition to an additional amount for milk banks that achieve self-sufficiency, meeting the demand of reference neonatal units.
The Alyne Network will also encourage the use of Kangaroo Methodwhose scientific evidence proves a positive impact on outcomes such as infection, breastfeeding and mortality – with a 240% increase in the value of Kangaroo Neonatal Care Units (UCINca). The practice consists of placing the baby in contact with the parents’ bodies, in a position similar to that in which a kangaroo carries its young.
To integrate pregnant women’s data, an electronic version of the Pregnant Women’s Handbook is expected to be launched in 2024 through the “Meu SUS Digital” application.
