The transformation of the Health System began. In Mérida, the Secretary of Health and the governors of Campeche, Chiapas, Guerrero, Oaxaca, Quintana Roo, Tabasco, Veracruz and Yucatan, signed an agreement to guarantee the right to health with medical care and free medicines for the population without social security.
In the words of the Secretary of Health, Dr. Jorge Alcocer Varela, "health will pass from the written and dead word to each of our communities and our peoples.
" These are, briefly, the commitments made between the Health System and the eight states of the Mexican Southeast:
- 1st. A Health System that eliminates fragmentation and segmentation will be built gradually. Priority will be given to the population of the regions of very high or high marginalization.
- 2nd. Health services will be provided by the Federal Government to the people of Mexico. The joint action of public health institutions, federal and state, will be under the central command of the Secretary of Health.
- 3rd. The signatory states will promote new schemes that allow carrying out the transfer of their facilities and financial resources to achieve the objective of the Agreement. An in-depth review of the labor situation of workers in the sector will be carried out to ensure the universalization of health services.
- 4th. A policy of access to free health services and medicines will be established, under the implementation of a Primary Health Care Integrated Model [...] The Secretary of Health and local governments are committed to jointly strengthen their first level of care with the active participation in public health actions, with personnel and necessary supplies in the proportion that corresponds to them according to the population under their responsibility.
- 5th. The implementation of coordinated networks of health services will be promoted in which all public health institutions, federal or local in a certain area, participate in order to guarantee the proper health care services and continuity of the network.
- 6th. The attention provided will be distinguished by its opportunity, quality and humanization. The supply of medicines and other necessary health supplies will be guaranteed in each medical unit.
- 7th. Legal reforms and other regulatory adjustments that are necessary for the Federation, through the Secretary of Health, to be able to organize, operate, supervise and evaluate the provision of health care services in the territorial circumscriptions of the signatory states, as well as for the Secretary to be responsible for coordinating the joint action of the federal and state public health institutions, will be promoted at the federal and local levels.
- 8th. The necessary coordination will be established to grant attention to real emergencies to save lives, particularly in cases of heart attack, ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke, obstetric emergencies and serious injuries due to accidents or violence.
- 9th. The strategic planning of a new health infrastructure that privileges the construction of health units for a rational use of the resources of infrastructure, equipment and properly trained personnel will be carried out jointly. This planning will be done taking into account the coordinated networks of health services as a prior step to the integration of all public health institutions.
- 10th. Social security institutions will be encouraged to collaborate in the care of the population without social security when their capacities allow it, so it doesn’t affect their beneficiaries. They may refer their members to the medical units of the coordinated network of health services when there is the capacity to receive them.
- 11th. It is agreed that the dependencies, federal and local decentralized public agencies that provide health services, may adhere to the Agreement, at any time, by signing the corresponding signature page.
- 12th. The specific legal instruments that are necessary to fulfill the commitments stipulated here will be celebrated accordingly.
- 13th There will be a fund of 22.5 billion additional pesos to benefit the inhabitants of the eight signatory states, which together sum up almost 28 million people.
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