The Hospital Proletário in João Pessoa: limits and possibilities for worker healthcare (Paraíba, 1930s)

Abstract We discuss the attempt to establish the Hospital Proletário in the capital of the state of Paraíba in the 1930s. To this end, we problematized the coverage in the newspaper A União on this episode. The involvement of different actors – workers, associations and physicians – reveals the emergence of a new way of thinking and implementing healthcare policies. According to the Vargas government’s national construction plan, actions like this were intended to ensure healthy workers – ready for the market and useful for the country. Despite its failure, the hospital project provided evidence of the different concepts of worker health during the Vargas Era. We identified the concepts of “health interdependence,” “social medicine,” “regulated citizenship” and the “labor movement.”