Objectives

Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) countries have made important progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets related to health (SDG3) at the national level. However, vast within-country health inequalities remain. We present a baseline of health inequalities in the region, against which progress towards the SDGs can be monitored.

Setting

We studied 21 countries in LAC using data from Demographic and Health Surveys and Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey carried out from 2011 to 2016.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed gaps and weaknesses in health care systems worldwide, but it has also highlighted countries’ capacity to respond and provided valuable lessons for the future. The pandemic has highlighted the need for countries to work together on scientific evidence production and vaccine development and elucidated the commonality of pandemic-related challenges, such as personal protective equipment unavailability and supply chain disruptions.

[Extract] Latin America emerged as one of the epicenters of the COVID-19 pandemic. As of March 2022, the region, representing only 8.4% of the world’s population, had more than 65 million confirmed cases, or 15% of cases worldwide, and more than 1.6 million deaths, or 28% of deaths worldwide. Latin America’s gross national product contractions resulting from the pandemic are estimated to be between 7% and 10%; these contractions have increased unemployment and poverty and exacerbated income inequality.

[Extract] Over the past two years the world and its different regions, including Latin America, have been suffering from the enormous burden and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (2) (SARS-CoV-2).

[Extract] Countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) have made great efforts over recent decades to increase effective coverage of health services over recent decades, although large inequities persist among and within the countries. The urban–rural gap is the most notable inequity in this region. However, unlike most of the public health problems that are predominant in LAC, COVID-19 has primarily affected urban areas, especially areas of concentrated poverty.

The COVID-19 pandemic struck the world in 2020 and was particularly harsh in Latin America, where a combination of social disparities and vulnerabilities led to unprecedented health and economic crises.1 One remarkable impact is the exceedingly high death toll in the region, especially given the “excess mortality rate,” which is probably the measure that best reflects the total numbers of direct and indirect deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic.(2,3)

Before COVID-19 reached Colombia and the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the pandemic, in Antioquia we were already strengthening our capacity to face it. Seeing the experiences in other countries, we took this threat seriously from the onset.

This article uses a health stewardship perspective to interpret the strengths of and challenges to national health authorities' capacities to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic through the renewed essential public health functions (EPHF) framework. Based on a literature review, this article argues that the institutional capacities required by countries to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic in the Americas included all four stages of the new EPHF policy cycle: assessment, policy development, allocation of resources and access. While health authorities provided these key functions (e.g.

Objectives

To examine the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on cancer care access in Chile, analyzing differential effects by insurance type, gender, and age.

Methods

We conducted a quasi-experimental study using interrupted time series analysis. We used multiple data sources for a broad evaluation of cancer-related health care utilization from January 2017 to December 2020. We fit negative binomial models by population groups for a range of services and diagnoses.

Objectives

To assess the baseline prevalence of mental health conditions and associated exposures in a cohort of health care workers (HCWs) in Guatemala.

Methods

We analyzed baseline information from 2020 Web-based COVID-19 Health Care Workers Study (HEROES)–Guatemala. Outcomes included mental distress and depressive symptoms. Exposures included COVID-19 experiences, sociodemographic characteristics, and job characteristics. We used crude and adjusted Poisson regression models in our analyses.