PAHO Sets Goals to Improve Health of Poorest Citizens
Washington, DC, September 22, 2003 (PAHO)—The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) is positioning itself to reach an ambitious set of goals in the next 12 years to improve the health of the hemisphere’s poorest citizens without letting progress on other fronts stall.
PAHO formed its initiative under the Millennium Development Goals established by the United Nations to achieve a broad range of reforms and advances worldwide by 2015.
For health in the Americas, this translates into a set of three general goals for PAHO:
- To improve circumstances for the most challenged areas and populations of the Region so all will enjoy health conditions that are not below what is considered average for the Region as a whole;
- To preserve gains made in public health over the last quarter century;
- To meet new challenges posed by circumstances as diverse as the emergence of new diseases to the threats of international terrorism.
"Our responsibility is to ensure that everyone — without exception — has access to new discoveries and new technologies," PAHO says in its newly released 2003 annual report, Moving towards a New Century of Health in the Americas. "We also must increase the health capital and quality of life of individuals and communities, so as to render persons more resilient and communities safer and less vulnerable to natural or manmade disasters and catastrophes."
The challenge at hand for public health in the Americas already is great:
- HIV infection in the Caribbean has reached 2% of the total population, the largest level in the world outside Sub-Saharan Africa.
- One in four adults in the Region will suffer from some form of mental illness.
- Violence in some countries has reached epidemic proportions.
- Obesity is a pandemic.
"We must forge new alliances to strengthen continental solidarity, address new social dimensions of health, continue to advocate for the improvement of health systems, emphasize the importance of quality of care through a wider use of monitoring and evaluation mechanisms, and facilitate access to information and knowledge through the new tools made available be the information and social communication revolution," the PAHO annual report says. It was presented today by PAHO Director Dr. Mirta Roses to health ministers meeting here.
PAHO credits actions such as these with helping to arrest the rapid spread of the disease SARS.
"Important lessons were learned about the best way to deal with the AIDS pandemic, and these are now being applied in the fight against SARS," the PAHO report says. "Sharing reliable information with the countries regarding the course of the epidemic is one of those lessons that always should be remembered, especially because at least 20 new infectious diseases have been identified since the AIDS epidemic began."
The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) was established in 1902 and is the world's oldest public health organization. PAHO works with all the countries of the Americas to improve the health and quality of life of its people. PAHO also serves as the Regional Office for the Americas of the World Health Organization (WHO).
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