In 1970 the health authorities of the regional countries concerned with the health problems of women and their newborns created the Latin American Center for Perinatology, as a technical specialized center for PAHO. In the international conferences in Cairo in 1994 and Beijing in 1995, and the United Nations conferences of monitoring held after 5 and 10 years, the countries made a commitment to the challenge of serving on a priority basis for the care of Women Health and Sexual and Reproductive Health, emphasizing that reproductive rights are basic human rights.
In 2000, representatives of 189 countries met in the United Nations on occasion of the historical Millennium Summit and approved an ambitious set of objectives: “Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). These eight objectives, with its 18 aims and its respective indicators represent a routing slip to be fulfilled in 2015. These interrelated objectives intend to improve the quality of life, and thus people`s health. The objectives 4, 5, 6, refer specifically to women sexual and reproductive health, and perinatal and children`s health. Perinatology is concerned with the events that happen around the birth, what implies the continuum of care of women, before and during gestation and the care of their children.
These universal mandates, together with a resolution arising from the 57th World Health Assembly 2004, to promote strategies for accelerating compliance with the agreements of the aforementioned conferences, lead the Family and Community Health Area in 2005 to decentralize the Women and Reproductive Health Unit and to merge it with CLAP, creating the Latin American Unit/Center for Perinatology/Women and Reproductive Health (CLAP/WR). This decision made possible to improve the training of a critical mass of staff members with greater approximation to the regional countries, a smaller operational cost and basically an offer of a strategically unified technical cooperation that utilizes PAHO human and financial resources at country level in a more appropriated way.
The CLAP/WR technical proposal will focus on the strengthening of the services in the framework of the Primary Health Care Strategy and its communities with strategies that attend the basic needs throughout the continuum of the life cycle.
• Vision, Mission and Values
The vision, mission and value concepts that rules de development of the Unit/Center CLAP/WR, were defined by all staff members of the Unit/Center in a participative way during the beginning of the process of reorganization and development of its Strategic Plan.
Vision
CLAP/WR will be an Institution with technical expertise and regional leadership, that will work with a multidisciplinary perspective aiming at knowledge generation and spread and facilitate policy development to help solve the priority problems in the areas of woman health, sexual and reproductive health, perinatal health, focused on people rights in order to guarantee the life quality of the Americas population.
Mission
Provide Technical Cooperation to promote and strength the capacities of countries in the Region of the Americas in the access and universal coverage of family health care, the woman, the mother and her newborn with the involvement of men; from an efficiency and equity perspective, through the identification and application of sustainable solutions.
Values
Values that rule the development of the CLAP/WR include the following:
• Equity: (Struggle
for the impartiality and justice through the elimination of differences
that are avoidable and unnecessary) |
II. – RESOLUTIONS
The CD46.R6 Resolution from the 46th Executive Council Meeting, held in 2005 in Washington DC, in direct reference to the decision adopted in order to do an effective decentralization of the Woman Health Unit, its fusion with CLAP and creation of the (Latin American Unit/Center of Perinatology / Woman and Reproductive Health – CLAP/WR), extract textually, the point three, literal b of said resolution:
“to take note of the reorganization of the Family and Community Health Area (FCH) from the Office, that regional technical cooperation decentralizes CLAP for the monitoring and the reduction of reproductive and perinatal risks, and for the woman health”
III. CLAP/WR STRATEGIC APPROACH
The CLAP/WR Strategic Plan will be directed to try to improve the quality of life and welfare of the families and communities, particularly the women, men and the newborns, considering the Inequities and contributing with the MDGs 3, 4, 5 and 6 achievements.
In this context, the strategic plan will be designed for the purpose of directing the delivery of technical cooperation to strength the countries capacities and to improve the reproductive and sexual health, incorporating the perspective of gender and of life cycle.
With this frame of reference, CLAP/WR identifies the following priority areas of work:
• Mobilize
the political will in order to create legal and regulation frameworks as
support for the
establishment
of policies and plans of regional,
sub-regional, national, and local actions related to the women health, the
sexual and reproductive health, the male participation and the reduction in
mortality and maternal morbidity, perinatal and neonatal.(ODM 3, 4, 5 and 6)
• Carry out advocacy in the Member States so that are destined human and
financial resources and are prioritized actions in order to achieve the access
and the
universal coverage to systems which are strengthened and skilled of the reproductive,
maternal, and neonatal health that help to solve the inequities that contribute
with the disease and mortality levels among the excluded, within the framework
of an approach to cultural diversity, straight and gender equity.
• Formulate, develop and adapt appropriate technologies, standards and guides based in the evidence focused according to the Strategy of Primary Care, in order to strengthen the national capacities in sexual and reproductive health, including contraception, maternal, perinatal and neonatal health, cervical cancer and violence of gender in coordination with other PAHO Units and Areas (MDGs 3, 4, 5 and 6).
• Orient the planned delivery of technical cooperation, giving training for the implementation of appropriate technologies, guides and standards based on the evidence for the care of the sexual and reproductive health, the reduction of the maternal mortality, including the prevention of the pregnancy in adolescent and the neonatal comprehensive management in coordination with FCH/CA, and the vertical transmission of HIV/AIDS and Congenital Syphilis in coordination with FCH/AI.
• Strengthen, at regional and country levels, the monitoring systems, surveillance, and evaluation of progress toward the MDGs referent to the reproductive, maternal, perinatal and neonatal health. Strength the implementation and the development of the local capacities in the use of Perinatal Computer System (SIP) and its incorporation into the national surveillance systems in the countries. It will also be strengthened the capacity in the use of methodologies for audit in severe maternal morbidity and maternal death.
• Promote and to develop operations research directed to problems identified as priority in order to provide useful information for the proposal intervention oriented to the improvement of sexual and reproductive health, maternal, perinatal and neonatal.
• Propose integral training models of human resources and strategic innovative intervention in order to strengthen the development of the quality of the sexual and reproductive, maternal, perinatal, and neonatal health services.
• Strengthen and reorient the services in SSR promoting the empowers to the women, men, families and communities to continue the maternal and child cares as an efficient intervention for the reduction in, maternal, perinatal and neonatal mortality and morbidity and the promotion of the services and care of Sexual and Reproductive Health.
• Strengthen the interagency coordination and the development of alliances and networks at a global level, regional and country, promoting and supporting the progress in the policies and programs related with sexual and reproductive, maternal and neonatal health, promoting the participation of the parties directly responsible and the sharing of experiences