Hospital in Cienfuegos, Cuba. AP Photo/Franklin Reyes. All rights reserved.
In recent decades, progress in Latin American societies has been shifting the focus of public debate from the fight against authoritarian regimes, the lack of freedom and crises related to extreme poverty, exploitation and underdevelopment, towards the consolidation of democratic transitions, the conquest and defense of social and civil rights, and the construction of a developing welfare state, a typical feature of advanced societies which is here an established aspirational goal. Although structural weaknesses in the region are still plentiful, the discussion on healthcare systems, their universalization and accessibility has been gaining ground among the political priorities of multilateral agencies and national governments, local political actors, human and civil rights activists, and different actors from organized civil society and the economic and business world.
Even though Latin America carries the weight of some constitutive problems that hinder the development of its societies, in the last decade some progress has been reported which certainly needs consolidating and strengthening, but leads us to believe that the debate on health in the region, which the Barcelona Institute of Global Health (ISGlobal) and DemocraciaAbierta are proposing through a series of forthcoming articles, is particularly relevant at this point in time and may hopefully have some impact on the debate on the development of a healthcare ecosystem throughout the continent.
