What kind of health in the 21st century

Abstract

While always remaining the same, health stands for no less than a demand for a radical change in the economy, in politics and culture. In 1948, the World Health Organization included in its constitution a definition of health as «a high standard of physical and mental health and well-being and not merely the absence of disease.» Consistently, this ambitious vision materialized in the program Health for All by 2000, which emphasized the redistribution of global resources for health and the conversion of military spending into expenditure on health as the basis for a right effective on a global scale. The time of these references seems to have waned. The primacy of rights has been replaced with the dogma of the lessening of the State and social expenditures.We stand before a feeble culture and a narrow point of view on health. It is an unwise culture and, above all, one that does not - deliberately or not - have regard for the determinants of healthcare. It is a culture not of struggling people but of officials. However, in this time of domineering statistical indicators, health continues to be a complicating element that shuns the realm of percentages. This reductionist view is counterpointed by the personalized, integrated and participatory view of the General Practitioner. If so, General Practice, with the Customized and Community components, is the array of health for the twenty-first century. Just as it has been all through the ages.