Health for All by the Year 2000: A Challenge for the Education of Health Personnel

Abstract

The accumulated experience in international collaboration in general and in the health field especially, the conquest of smallpox, the great decision of the United Nations to set into motion a programme of action for the establishment of a new international economic order, and the increasing realisation of the great and growing inequities in the health field were some of the main factors which conditioned a historic resolution of the 30th World Health Assembly in May 1977. This resolution, after saying that “faced with the magnitude of health problems and the inadequate and intolerably inequitable distribution of health resources throughout the world today” and “considering that health is a basic human right and a world-wide social goal, and that it is essential to the satisfaction of basic human needs and the quality of life” and “reaffirming that the ultimate constitutional objective of WHO is the attainment by all people of the highest possible level of health”, declared that “the main social target of governments and WHO in the coming decades should be the attainment by all citizens of the world by the year 2000 of a level of health that will permit them to lead a socially and economically productive life” [1].