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The Pan American Health Organization of the 21st century: a new pact for health for America and the Caribbean

2022-09-28T16:24:04.854Z


The pandemic taught us that community, local, national and transnational relations save us and that health is above all things and, above all, above the market


Health is first.

This phrase only acquired the meaning and grandeur it deserves after two years of the global pandemic (2020-2021) in which we live firsthand, all of us, how definitive the fact of having or not having access to health can be. public.

Prevention, attention, vaccines.

Three steps that marked differences and increased inequalities between social sectors, rich and poor;

between men and women and between countries.

Our Latin American region responded as best it could: with health systems that are fragmented and, in many cases, weakened due to recent decades of cuts.

However, we were also able to rescue that other part of the experience that had to do with the resilience, courage, unity, generosity and dedication of the women and men who are part of that global family that we call the public health system: medical, nursing, paramedical and cleaning staff in hospitals and clinics.

All this experience put at the center life, people, the quality of our citizenship, democracy and that social contract that sustains us and that leads us, beyond governments and parties, towards a future of well-being, coexistence and peace. .

The pandemic left us many lessons and one of them is that prevention is our most powerful weapon, that community, local, national and transnational relationships save us, and that health is, above all things and above all above the market , a common good, a collective heritage of goods, services and knowledge that we must protect.

It is time to implement what we have learned from this great world lesson.

It is time to tell ourselves and prove to ourselves that there will be no turning back;

that health systems cannot be abandoned to their fate or to the

invisible hand of the market

;

that we cannot ignore the strength of regional international cooperation nor miss this opportunity to update, innovate and perfect the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO).

PAHO is a living organism, made up of hundreds of valuable and valued health professionals, committed day by day to its advancement and to establishing it, with all solidity, at the head of this promising common project that is the idea of ​​an America and the Caribbean in the XXI century.

And this common project is a

new pact for universal health

that contains three fundamental elements: the strengthening of primary care services with universal coverage as well as mental health and sexual and reproductive health;

the co-responsible construction of health self-sufficiency, installing and maintaining capacities for innovation and health regulation in the region, ready to generate solutions to the challenges that may arise in the future;

and third, to work together for a more effective, efficient, transparent, inclusive, and versatile PAHO, with a dynamic global projection open to dialogue with other agencies, while being the voice of our America and the Caribbean in the WHO.

On September 28, the election will take place that will decide the course of this organization for the following years.

It is not just another election, Mexico joins this competitive election not only to finally have the first Mexican Director General of the Organization, but also because we have a generous, open and active foreign policy.

We verified it during the pandemic when we donated vaccines in critical periods, and when we decided to package two biologicals in our country.

I am Mexican, woman, doctor and public health worker.

I lived through the pandemic as president of the National Institute for Women in Mexico.

I assumed this position 40 years after studying medicine and dedicating my career to public health, women's equality and international cooperation.

Having been on the side of civil society, international agencies and now the government has allowed me to build a broad, comprehensive and inclusive view, capable of seeing the whole and not just a part of the problem.

I believe in the need to listen and in our human capacity to grow through dialogue.

These are times of change, more than ever.

I am convinced that the time has come to put PAHO in the 21st century and that will only be possible with a horizontal, dialoguing, participatory leadership capable of mastering the difficult art of building a common future above individual interests, considering always the history, the contexts and the cultural, political, economic, ethnic and geographic diversity of our region.

A united America, linked to the world, but strong enough to look inward and dialogue on equal terms with what we know as the

global north

.

Rosario Castellanos, the great Mexican writer, told us that “emancipation means, fundamentally, not a feat of will, not a test of aptitude, not a display of intelligence, but something more difficult and more dangerous than all that: a feat of balance.

And with this inspiring idea in mind, with this dilemma that is also the paradox in which we Americans and Caribbeans live daily, who see the difference between being a sum of countries or being a collective project, I make a call to build together this new health pact that places at the heart of the public health policies of the Region, the idea of ​​the universal right to health, quality of life and well-being, recovering unity and a common destiny.

Nadine Gasman

is

candidate from Mexico to head PAHO.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-09-28

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