Abstract

AMARO CANO, María del Carmen. Some more reflections on the ethics of primary health care. Rev Cubana Med Gen Integr [online]. 2003, vol.19, n.6, pp.1-1. ISSN 0864-2125.

In the book Topics of Comprehensive General Medicine published in 2001, I concluded by asserting that there were many questions that should be approached from the ethical point of view in Primary Health Care and that they will be dealt with in another publication devoted to this health care level. I also warned that there are serious problems that may become real conflicts and generate dilemmas of ethical character, and I expressed the criterion that the Medical Ethics Commissions created at the PHC institutions should be known by all the health area workers, specially their structure and functions and the relations that must be developed with the family physician and nurse of the family physician's office. At the time of writing this article, I considered that I had to refer to a social value that has turned into a universal ethical principle, health justice, that in Cuba is part of social justice, which together with the dignifying and independentist ideal, is one of the milestones of the Revolution. Finally, it is not possible to deal with a PHC topic without making reference to the most important clinical, epidemiological and social investigation of the National Health System carried out at this health care level, the Analysis of the Health Situation. The importance of social participation and its ethical implications should also be taken into account. The general objective of this paper is to make professors and managers working at the PHC level to reflect on these aspects that require, more than any other, not only to know and to know doing, but specially to know being.

Keywords : Ethics/PHC.