This study analyses the organization of the Sanitary Surveillance of Feira de Santana (VISA) in the process of health decentralization (1998-2000), pointing out the advances and limits on the local stage. It is an exploratory study, of qualitative approach, in a historic-social perspective whose spatial area was the Sanitary Vigilance Division of the municipal Health Department. The statements made by managers, technicians, sanitary inspectors and documentary sources made up the empirical material. The analysis made clear the absence of a political project for the decentralized management of VISA's actions in the local government. It points limits: (dis)articulation from the regional level, temporary human resources and without technical qualification, the difficulties in the use of the financial incentive, infrastructure insufficiency and political interfering. The study emphasizes advances: fulfillment of the Agreed and Integrated Programming, listing of the establishments subject to sanitary control, inter-institutional articulation. This projec needs the mobilization of members of society that have the ability to speak up so to give the project a priority agenda, in favor of life quality.
Sanitary surveillance; Descentralization of health; Health rigths
