Charting a future for health in the Americas: quadrennial report of the Director

ABSTRACT

Charting a Future for Health in the Americas describes the work of the Pan American Health Organization in recent years. The report opens with a disquisition on the significance of its title-how PAHO has had, and will continue to need, to chart and steer a steady course, dealing with and even capitalizing on changes along the way, in order to reach its goal health in the Americas. With pointillistic highlights of the organization's century-long work in its major fields of responsibility, the report brings the accounting of its actions to the present. It describes the resources PAHO has employed and the impact its cooperation with member countries has had on assessing the regional health situation, enhancing health and human development, preventing and controlling diseases, promoting health, protecting the environment, and strengthening health systems and services. Morever, because of the stature it has attained, the organization has been able to strike alliances with other international agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and the private sector-and the story of their shared agenda is recounted here. This, then, is the latest in a series of reports of progress in public health throughout the Americas and, at the same time, of the work of an organization built to last (Back cover)