Lo positivo y lo negativo del cuidado de la salud en América Latina

Abstract

We can say that Latin America is in a process of transition whereby quarantinable diseases are fading away and health problems tend to reflect the characteristic of each environment and its influence on the human beings who live in it. They are becoming more and more peculiar to each community and to the trends of development. Health care is no longer related exclusively to the unexpected epidemic outbreak nor to the application of specific methods of the biological disciplines as a separate entity. It is becoming a part of modern science and technology to increase the economy for the welfare of man

Far from being limited to urban areas, the disease problems and the health aspirations of Latin America extend into most of its rural communities sped through all the channels of modern communication. There are few places untouched in some way by the fingers of 20th Century commerce, while the health contrasts of affluence and poverty remain all too easily documented in the "political arithmetic" of the northern and southern contients. The inference is not only for a broadening of the concept and actions of health care as an integral part of the development of Latin America; it is also for an extension of health insights and influences into almost all the other aspects of national development and planning(AU)