Para la salud colectiva: ¿ Remedios o Medicamentos?

Abstract

The Research Project “Collective Health: Remedies or Prescription Drugs/Pharmaceuticals?” is the final stage of various Research Projects carried out in the National University of Luján (UNLu) for a number of years, whose common line was the discussion, exploration and analysis of different approaches to achieve a better Community/Collective health for human populations; basically by exploring two dichotomy alternatives: the priority use of Prescription Drugs/Pharmaceuticals or the implementation of structural policies, collectively called “Remedies” within the Health sector itself and in other social and economic sectors. Thus, this enquiry is based of an obvious and essential contradiction: whether Health is an area for profit making, resulting in the production of commodities for sale, as exemplified by providing medical insurance for profit, private production of pharmaceuticals, medical supplies and technologies; or it is a means for the attainment of social rights for people, this becoming one of the basic responsibilities of the State . The hypothesis of this Thesis is established from this contradiction. Collective /Community health can be defined as the supposed merger between two types of the actions of two types of modifiers : called “Remedies”, the structural ones that refer to policies that act upon determinants of disease of all kinds, versus “Prescription Drugs” that are seen to a significant level as the attainment of cures associated to a profit motive. Three basic questions will guide this Thesis. What are the priorities when planning and implementing Health policies in Argentina?. What are the key resources in these designs?. In each case, are “Remedies” or “Pharmaceutical Drugs “the most appropriate choices for improving their Health targets? For these purposes, studies have been carried out on how, the Governments of Argentina in the 21 st Century, have encouraged policies that stressed “Prescription Drugs”, giving less priority to the implementation of other types of Health policies, usually encouraged by other State Agencies (Ministries of Education, Social Development , etc. ), to assure access to food, housing, education, containment, etc. .