Governance and stewardship of quality in health services in Peru

Abstract

The care of people and their health is a primary function of the family and of society as shown by studies on primitive humans, as well as in pre-Hispanic Peru. The conquest and subsequent centuries of colonization fractured the traditional way of caring for people, replacing social solidarity with charity actions mainly from religious orders that provided hospices later called hospitals. During the colony and until the beginning of the 20th century, the care of the sick continued to be the responsibility of charitable institutions, such as the Charities created after independence. Social rights such as education and health only emerged in the first decades of the last century and were enshrined in the 1933 Constitution. However, both in that Constitution as in those from 1979 and 1993, the right to education was recognized more fully, while the right to heath was limited. The Universal Health Coverage Act of 2009 propounds guaranteeing the right to access quality healthcare services for everybody, as part of the right to health in the broadest sense. The current limitations force us to redefine the right of every citizen to comprehensive care of their health and the State’s guidance to guarantee it.