Health conditions in Argentina: facing the twenty-first century.

This paper describes the state of health in Argentina. As in other countries in the Latin American region, the public sector and the role of the state in Argentina are in the midst of structural transformation. Public policy has been formulated with the aim of improving economic efficiency in the long term, often at the cost of basic services, such as health, education and safety. Provision of health care services to a population characterized by high levels of poverty and unemployment, which is also rapidly growing and ageing, needs to be addressed when major policies are decided. Otherwise, a large group of inhabitants in Argentina will not be able to reach the universally proposed minimum levels of health by the year 2000.