About the Country Summaries of the Third Evaluation of Health for All in the Year 2000

The purpose of the Third Evaluation of Health for All -the last prior to the year 2000- was to enable Member Countries of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) evaluate the progress with regards to the goals established for Health for All and the application of the Primary Health Care Strategy, for the identification of areas that require priority actions and the elements that limit and facilitate this progress.

It is important to mention that, while summaries were prepared by PAHO, the reports on which these summaries are based were prepared by technical staff from the Member Countries following a common reference framework and formatting, consulting the data sources available to them. Nevertheless, such sources were not always indicated in the summary reports or were not available for public consultation. For those reasons, it was not always possible to define which statistical methods were used, if they were used, to correct and adjust the values of the national indicators. Under these circumstances it is difficult to achieve a complete agreement between the values of the indicators from these reports with the indicators used by the PAHO Secretariate in other publications. We present here, in their original language, the main conclusions from the 33 country reports received at PAHO, the same that were complemented with data from other information sources.

The Special Program for Health Analysis (SHA) of PAHO supports the analysis and dissemination of health information through different instruments such as these Summaries and the Basic Country Health Profiles. These country data and information contribute to the knowledge in health and the well being of the people of the Americas. As such, it should stimulate the use of information as a powerful instrument of change.