Inspired by a Foucauldian and postcolonial theoretical-methodological framework, this thesis will investigate the meanings attributed to the right to health, arguing that the policies that allow the preservation of life today have involved, above all, a domestic process of (re)definition of demos and of who belongs to it, while having its limits influenced and constrained by international politics. Thus, this thesis will observe that the defense of a right to health in post-colonial territories raises three problems. Firstly, there is an urgent need to tackle the racialization that keeps colonial oppression alive at home, and that prevents the inclusion of the most vulnerable parts of the population in the set of human rights that must be preserved by the State. Secondly, there is the challenge of managing, in a sustainable manner, global policies that have as their starting point the social determinants of health that perpetuate the vulnerability of populations in developing countries. Thirdly, the present thesis will argue that it is right when it is possible to conceive, constitutionally, the entire population as a citizen in the national territory, that the very conception of citizenship is re-signified and emptied in the international sphere, preventing the completion of a cycle of rights. At the turn of the 21st century, the consolidation of neoliberal governance facilitated the maneuvers in the interrelationships between health, rights, and the economy, normalizing human suffering on a global scale and reducing health to the possibility of medical consumption and not to the accomplishment of a full and healthier life. By excluding political, socioeconomic, and environmental dimensions from decision making process that make life in good health possible, neoliberal governance would lead us to a global scenario of necropolitics generalization, where the right to health would be re-signified by the complexity of its fragmentation and the multiplicity of actors involved in its execution. Considering the Brazilian experience in constructing the largest public health system in the world, this thesis will seek to understand the conditions of possibility for the preservation of life in a context of shrinking rights and democratic spaces around the world.