| dc.description.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.
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