The 10 year health plan for the Americas: Introduction: an updated self help perspective on our international activities

The term "health planning" is defined as the attempt to determine the health needs and wants of a population and to design and implement the means of meeting them. The tragedy of Latin American health planning has been that the wisdom of their approach, which seeks to concern health consumers first rather than cater to the avarice of health producers as is done in the U.S., has not been matchable by the level of technological and political sophistication needed to bring it off. Thus, whenever a Latin American country sought unilateral assistan ce, their own farsighted goals of health for their people have often bee n forced into a secondary place by guidance from shortsighted but technically proficient spokesmen of ultrasophisticated medical care. A huge portion of all health dollars currently serve a small portion of the populace in many countries assisted by the U.S. American health professionals would be well advised to participate actively in the studies and deliberations of Latin American planners, whose wisdom has been ignored for too long.