In the year 2012, for the first time in the history of humanity, the urban population has exceeded the rural population. This change has been conditioned, in large part, by migratory flows in the direction of the field to the cities, singularizing the importance of the situation according to epidemiological, ecological, political, and social aspects. These issues are highlighted by the United Nations (UNICEF and WHO) especially considering the remarkable and growing relevance that the poverty condition of rural families exercises in this displacement, creating a remarkable adverse and conflictive environment, mainly in the health sector. This fact occurs because the infrastructure of urban services is not keeping up with the sprawls in the outskirts of the cities of medium and large sizes. These arguments, of universal character, assume a crucial importance in developing countries, as in the case of Brazil, Latin America, an Asian subcontinent and the greater part of Africa. It is a context that justifies the I Brazilian Workshop on the Health of Subnormal Urban Clusters (old slums) to be held in Recife, as a strategy to consolidate a basic information framework about the epidemiological scenario, the supply and demand for health care services in urban areas of poverty. With an propositional objective: establish an agenda for research and intervention models having as focus the priorities of health of these urban spaces submitted to socio-economic conditions of recognized vulnerability.
Poverty areas; Health; Developing countries; Brazil