Status and progress of family health in Latin America and the Caribbean: the Ibero-American Confederation of Family Medicine (ICPM) perspective

Abstract

In the XXI century, much of humanity does not have access to comprehensive health care, or even basic equitable health care. If studies show that countries with organized health systems based on a qualified and inclusive model of Primary Health Care (PHC) and family physicians as permanent staff are achieving unquestionable results, why a large part of the countries with lower socio-economic development have not committed strongly to implement an efficient reform of their health systems based on PHC and family medicine (FM)? These issues are at the core of the Latin American Confederation of Family Medicine’s concerns, an international non-profit organization composed of national associations of countries of FM from Latin America, Spain and Portugal. Its primary mission is to drive the implementation of a proper PHC system in all countries of the region and to ensure that family medicine, as a specialty, is considered critical to health systems, thereby transforming it into a public policy.

Keywords

• primary care
• family doctors
• CIMF
• health care systems