2023-06-27 22:00:25
In Latin America, public spending on health stands at 3.8% of GDP.
Despite the constant advances in medical innovation, not all people can access the latest generation drugs and treatments.
Collaboration between the actors of the health ecosystem is essential to guarantee access to innovative services and therapies.
In Latin America, access to health services and medical innovation They should be within everyone’s reach, affordable, sustainable and sustainable. This is essential to prevent and diagnose diseases early, to ensure that people and society are healthy.
Public spending on health within Latin America
According to the study figures Health Panorama: Latin America and the Caribbean 2020 carried out by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the World Bank, in our region public spending on health stands at 3.8% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
This is a very high cost for a developing region, whose health systems require a significant injection of capital to tackle diseases that kill or incapacitate the workforce needed for development.
Health care requires three elements to lessen the burden of a weakened workforce. Being available to everyone and affordable, capital investment to break down barriers to innovative services and therapies, accompanied by collaboration between the actors that are part of the ecosystem that revolves around patients.
What should be learned from the Covid-19 pandemic?
An example of this was how the COVID-19 pandemic showed that in Latin America most countries cannot face this type of situation on their own.
“At AstraZeneca, we not only developed a non-profit vaccine in record time, but we acted quickly to form a coalition with different actors in society, which was essential to guarantee access to our vaccines. The result translates into more than six million lives saved during the first 12 months of its use since December 2020”, commented Alberto Hegewish, AstraZeneca Medical Director for Latin America.
In addition to the impact of COVID-19 pandemic, other relevant diseases in the region that require specialized treatments are highlighted. One of them is the virus respiratorio sincitial (RSV), which mainly affects premature infants with congenital heart disease or cardiopulmonary dysplasia, which can cause severe pneumonia and lead to hospitalization in this vulnerable population. This is why the application of monoclonal antibodies is being promoted to prevent this disease in the first days of life and avoid further infections.
“Our commitment to the patient drives us to put him first at all times. In the fight against cancer, science has made great strides forward. We have launched multiple therapies for stages of the disease, where options were limited. But most importantly, we have made significant progress in studying our early-stage treatment options. By obtaining positive responses in these cases, we have managed to substantially improve the quality of life of patients.”
Finally, it is important to promote detection and access to innovative treatments to improve the quality of life of patients with rare diseases, since in the region there are about 32 million people in Latin America who suffer from this type of condition.
These patients and first-contact doctors are often unaware of the symptoms of these diseases, leading to late diagnosis or lack of access to the necessary medications to treat them, which can have serious consequences on their physical and mental quality.
In this sense, recent years have taught us that we all have a role to play in providing people with preventive health care, timely diagnosis and life-changing treatments, regardless of where they live or their social status.
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