Technical Meeting on Education for health sciences at the Primary Health Care (PHC) and textbooks

From 7 to 10 June 2011 held in Cartagena, Colombia the workshop on education in health sciences at the primary health care and textbooks aimed to propose and discuss political and technical guidelines renewal, training of health professionals has gained over the past three years a major relevance in the world, its adaptation to changing health priorities and the era of knowledge and information. The main vision of this global movement is the need to transform basic education in creating a path of relevance and social responsibility.

For its part, the OPS has historically addressed this issue in the context of the development of human resources for health and for the past seven years has strengthened and re-created a line of work aimed to review and support the reorientation of science education health for the values, concepts and practices of primary health care (PHC) and public health. In this context, meetings were held to analyze the trends in education and discuss new horizons and proposals. Central to these processes is to promote debate and action and multi-disciplinary enrichment training, continuing education and health care practices.

At the same time, the PALTEX Program of PAHO technical cooperation aimed at providing distributing textbooks and instructional materials for basic and continuing education in health sciences, is renewed every year depending on changes in health and education. PALTEX mainly distributed books in Spanish and Portuguese (Brazil) and considers it a priority to update its collection of texts and manuals as Member States indicate the new directions in health.

On this occasion, PAHO / WHO encourages the holding of this meeting to enrich and advance the above processes and contribute to the enrichment PALTEX Regional as well as to mark a starting point for discussion and action-oriented and multi-disciplinary public health and development of health systems based on PHC.

Objectives
1. Analyze trends in education in health sciences in the Americas and share experiences PHC orientation.
2. Recommend guidelines and regional strategies for the orientation of education in health sciences to the APS.
3. Recommend books that support the learning of the renewed APS and the possible creation of a series PALTEX on the subject.
4. Promote the creation of an inter-regional network designed to discuss, recreate, promote, create awareness and strengthen the orientation of education in health sciences to the APS.