Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) Director Dr. Mirta Roses has presented a report summarizing PAHO's work over the past year in the Americas, during a special session of a meeting of the region's ministers of health taking place at PAHO headquarters this week.
"As we know, there is a synergy between health and development," Roses said in presenting the Annual Report of the Director 2004. "Health is a key contributor to development, but it is also influenced by other factors of development, including social and environmental determinants."
Among key achievements cited in the report are: multicountry negotiations to cut the costs of treatment for HIV/AIDS; the declaration of Central America as free from cholera; and the regionwide Vaccination Week in the Americas, which reached 40 million children and adults in 35 countries of the Americas.
This year's Vaccination Week included, for the first time, a binational immunization effort along the U.S.-Mexico border.
In presenting the report, Roses observed that "severe acute respiratory syndrome [SARS], the first epidemic of the 21st century, demonstrated that collective, coordinated and transparent work by a group of institutions and countries can mitigate the harmful effects of a new disease on the population."
Roses noted that the Millennium Development Goals-a commitment by the world's countries to improve the quality of life of the poorest populations-have placed investing in health at the core of a new development agenda for 21st century.
Three of the millennium goals refer explicitly to health: reducing infant mortality, improving maternal health, and combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other infectious diseases. In addition, access to safe drinking water and to essential drugs are also among the goals.
Roses said in her report that enormous effort will be needed for the Americas to meet the millennium targets by 2015. She provided a general overview of this challenge: