Adapted from: J.-P. Unger. How could disease-specific programmes strengthen health systems delivering comprehensive health care? Strategic and technical guidelines. European Commission, 30 September 2008, Brussels.
Part 1: The need to alter health systems' missions to deliver comprehensive care
The strengthening of health systems appears to have become a motto for international health agencies since 2003, when the former director of the WHO, Jong-Wook Lee (2003–2006), called for a radical re-think of policy, if diseases are to be successfully controlled (Jong-Wook,2003). This view has been echoed by his successor Margaret Chan. However, unlike the growing body of scientific papers that have begun to advocate the strengthening of health systems over the past several years, we would argue that health systems can only be strengthened if they are designed to deliver universally accessible comprehensive care. The remainder of this chapter outlines the rationale for this thinking.
Comprehensive health care: medical and managerial arguments
In a recent address to the 61st World Health Assembly, WHO Director, Dr Margaret Chan, acknowledged that the MDGs had stalled (see Section 1) (Chan, 2008). Besides the MDGs, the control of neglected diseases has also met with difficulties (see Section 1, Chapter 2).