The study, by the New Cities Foundation, looked at the effects of bringing state-of-the-art health care diagnostic tools to sick and elderly residents of Rio's Dona Marta favela, an underserved shantytown up a steep hill from most conventional health care services.
Researchers at the New Cities Foundation, a nonprofit organization in Paris that seeks to tackle the most intractable issues facing the world’s fastest-growing cities, joined by a small team of health-care workers from Rio de Janeiro, recently concluded an 18-month trial in one of the poorest parts of the city, the favela of Santa Marta, a community of 8,000. Santa Marta was chosen for its unique geography and its remoteness—the rows of shanty homes appear to tumble down this hillside community where, until recently, there was no sewage, running water, or electricity to the upper reaches of this slum community, and access to even basic health care for the sick and elderly almost always involves an arduous slog downhill and up again.
Read more: BR: Glimpsing the Future of E-Health Care From a Rio Favela
In a pilot program, around 7.5 million of those voters will use biometric machines that will identify them by scanning fingerprints.
Brazil's Federal Election Court (Tribunal Superior Eleitoral – TSE) says it intends to have every voter in the country use biometric machines by 2018. However, experiments with the machines have found that the machines have difficulty registering some people's fingerprints.
Read more: Brazil to Use Half a Million Electronic Machines and Biometrics for Sunday's Elections
During the election, approximately 7.5 million of voters will use biometric machines that will identify them by scanning fingerprints. Brazil’s election authority, the Tribunal Superior Eleitoral, has committed to using biometric technology to eliminate the possibility of someone taking someone else’s place to vote, making it practically impossible for voter fraud to be committed.
Read more: Brazil municipal elections to employ biometric voting
The Cinturão Digital do Ceará (CDC), which translates as Ceará’s Digital Big Belt, will be inaugurated this Thursday by the governor Cid Gomes and the Science and Technology Minister Aloizio Mercadante.
So why did the local authorities decide to invest around R$50m (US$28.6m) into this initiative?