With the creation of the Unified Health System in 1990, the Ministry of Health has taken the first steps to decentralize health surveillance actions, which meant a decisive innovation in the traditional institutional framework in this area and challenge for managers at all three levels of the Federation. The effects of this determination were felt only after the creation of the National Sanitary Surveillance Agency, in late 1999, when it was possible to structure the current National System of Sanitary Surveillance in a design that encourages the role director, coordinator and executor of the more complex actions of the State Health Secretariats. This study analyzes the decentralization of management of VISA undertaken by the State Secretariat of Health of Rio de Janeiro between 2002-2006 and the conditions of the municipal acting in their duties by providing research-based analysis of reports evaluation of decentralization developed by the Center for Health Surveillance. Among the findings, it highlights the fragility of the State Health Secretariat to shoulder the burden assigned to it and issues underlying the performance hall. These findings reflect the many difficulties in intergovernmental relations on the need for parties to act jointly in a key area for the individual and collective health and welfare of the population. The study states the basic requirements of the process of structuring a body of VISA and makes an important contribution to better understand the political barriers, institutional, technical, material and human challenge to managers, to implement the innovations occasioned by decentralization in this complex field.
Unified Health System; health surveillance; decentralization
