[A critical view about public health in Mexico].

E-mail: [email protected] Public health is going through a crucial moment, and we have to take it as an opportunity to restore the leadership that once characterized Mexico both at regional and global level. In order to achieve such a goal, those of us who have devoted our professional efforts to strengthen the Mexican public health, must understand the state of the art in science, the new technologies and the new developments, not only to avoid being left behind, but to adopt a leading position, as befits to the respected medical tradition of our country. A retrospective view will allow us to have a starting point. Therefore, I invite you to remember some milestones in the history of our public health; milestones that represent achievements that were, in many cases, driven by distinguished members of this Academy. Looking back is not only an academic requirement: history is a warning from the future. Although the history of public health in our country spans over several centuries, it is until the Porfirio Diaz’s government when modern public health initiates in our country, with the establishment of the Superior Public Health Council and the enactment of the first Health Code1,2. After the revolutionary triumph and its institutionalization through the Constitution of 1917I, the importance of public health was acknowledged by establishing the General Health Council as a constitutional body that has subsists to the present day, being this Academy one of its members3. In 1922, when the institutions that would shape up the new Mexican State started to emerge, the Public Health School of Mexico was founded4, being one of the oldest in the continent, along with those at Johns Hopkins, Harvard and Sao Paulo universities5. Since then, those classrooms have witnessed the training of professionals who have been active participants in many achievements of the discipline in our country. It is important to highlight that the Public Health School of Mexico was the basis for the creation of the National Institute of Public Health in 19876. Currently, Mexico has approximately 30 public health schools7, among which the Department of Public Health of the School of Medicine of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM –Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México) stands out for its central role in human capital formation and in the development of research. I am, as many members of this Academy, a proud UNAM’s alumnus. During the decade of 1940s, the bases of the health system as we currently know it were set through the creation of the Mexican Institute of Social Security; the evolution of the Health Department to become the Ministry of Health and Assistance and the foundation of the first National Health Institutes8. In 1974, Mexico marked a milestone by establishing free reproductive choice as a constitutional rightII. Mexico was the the second country at global level to recognize that right and the first one in America to do it9. It was not until 1983, 66 years after the Constitution was enacted, that the right to health protection was incorporated within its textIII. In order to ensure access to this right, the General Health Law was issued by the Congress the following yearIV. PERMANYER www.permanyer.com