Perspectives in Health Magazine
The Magazine of the Pan American Health Organization
Special Centennial Edition
Volume 7, Number 2, 2002

Our presence in the countries enhances the capacity to respond to situations of disaster and emergency. Disasters are a normal part of our landscape, and our ability to see them as the result of lack of preparedness for the occurrence of natural hazards has been and must continue to be one of our strengths. Our focus on the continuum from preparedness through prevention, mitigation, succor and subsequent development has been and must continue to be one of our strengths into the next century. Natural hazards are by definition largely unpredictable, but we can limit the extent to which they become disasters.

Part of the landscape that will influence the guard we take will be the increasing number of actors who will be involved in health. It will be part of our strength to discern the nature of the partnerships that will be optimally productive and be complementary to our own actions. This will demand a flexibility and openness that can only come from a self-confidence born of having already scored a century and seen the value of partnerships in specific fields.

But in the final analysis, I believe that our ability to take a new guard and score another century will depend, more than anything else, on the power of the principles we espouse. In recent years I have promoted as vigorously as I could the concepts of equity and the pursuit of the Pan American ideal. The idea that we can help identify the inequalities in health that exist, and at the same time help to identify the inequality in the distribution of the determinants of that health, is a noble one. It is one that is worthy of an orga-nization that has been at the service of the Americas for 100 years. Abundant evidence shows that the countries of the Americas can perform great feats in health when they work together.

Undoubted benefits accrue to all countries from such joint efforts, but in addition I wish to see greater Pan American collaboration in support of countries in the Region that are less well endowed and have poorer health. My hope is that future generations of Americans will be seized, as we are, by the importance of the past century, and be as convinced of the nature of the challenges and the possibilities of PAHO addressing them based on some of the strengths I have outlined. If my hope is realized, then the prospects for at least another century of service are good.

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