Street youth: social imbalance and health risks.

Street youth are children and adolescents who express, through their bodies and lives, misery and social abandonment. Paradoxically, they are also the embodiment of resistance and survival strategies in a very unfavourable environment. The current deterioration of citizens' rights and the social inequalities reflect the consequences of vicious cycles of economic and political crises in Brazil. Poverty conditions reach levels of misery and create strategies of survival that create multiple high-risk health situations. Many other factors make up the complex dynamics of these conflicts in which the limit of rejection and social abandonment are expressed in the violence of extermination. The proposals and solutions cannot be dissociated from the reality of this country and of the street youth lifestyle. Effective health education within this social context is difficult, but possible with the development of appropriate audio-visual material and the dissemination of preventive health information. A commitment to action must permeate all levels of decision making within the health system and in our society, for it is the essence of democracy and human rights.