Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2004. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Associated Press - November 19, 2004
Will Weissert, Associated Press Writer
"We have increasingly similar problems with similar profiles" around the globe, Julio Frenk told a small group of reporters during a meeting that has brought together 29 secretaries of health and hundreds of international researchers. "There are some common challenges."
In much of the developing world, a simple lack of resources or the inability to keep trained doctors and nurses from immigrating overseas contribute to serious health problems.
But even in rich countries, public health breakdowns are provoked by mismanagement of plentiful funding and skilled work forces, research that isn't diversified enough to tackle pressing health problems and an undereducated public that doesn't take an active role in preserving its own well-being, Frenk said.
Tim Evans, assistant director-general of the World Health Organization, which is co-sponsoring the summit, said individual countries have been able to demonstrate concrete successes.
Thailand was able to combat serious staffing issues, such as how to keep doctors and nurses working in rural areas, by conducting studies on how to better apply its resources.
Tanzania has demonstrated that by focusing on infant mortality rates, it was able to find inexpensive remedies that helped some of its districts slash deaths of children under 5 by nearly half in fewer than five years.
Elsewhere in Africa, improved communication on the effectiveness of anti-viral vaccines has led to better treatment of tens of thousands of HIV and AIDS patients.
"But we're still too fragmented in terms of the national health policies of individual countries," Evans said. "There are, what I call, isolated islands of excellence but we're not bringing that knowledge together."
For instance, 100 million people end up in poverty every year after paying emergency care or long-term treatment costs out of their own pockets.
"When ministers hear information like that they respond," Evans said.
The five-day summit will conclude Saturday with a statement focusing on the importance not just of spending more money on treating and studying illnesses, but doing so in a more efficient way, so that available vaccines, prescription drugs and treatment technology reach those who continue to die every day from preventable ailments.
"What you haven't had is a process of successive steps taking the research agenda to a central level, a central policy position," Frenk said.
It remains to be seen, however, whether health ministers can take what they've learned in Mexico City and apply it back home.
Stephen Matlin, executive director of the Global Forum for Health Research, which is holding a separate international meeting in Mexico City, said he was optimistic that the health ministers gathered "understand it's not just about better funding, its more integral spending."
But a statement the global forum is preparing to release Saturday concludes that it is the responsibility of society as a whole, not just political leaders, to improve health care around the world.
"We are pointing to all sectors and saying you all share this and you've all got something you can do to improve things," Matlin said in an interview. He added that governments, researchers, the private sector and individual communities all need to better focus their energies toward stamping out health care inefficiencies.
"It's everybody's responsibility to do more," he said.
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