Mexico City – The Mexican government will work closely with international organizations to provide better health care, according the Federal Secretariat of Health (SSA.)

SSA head Mercedes Juan met with Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) director Carissa Etienne last Sunday to discuss health-care priorities in Mexico.

In a statement, Juan said that the PAHO’s priorities for Mexico match those of the Enrique Peña Nieto administration and would be outlined in the "National Development Plan 2013-18." She said that health promotion is an important part of the five guiding principles and 13 decisions President Peña Nieto set out at the start of his administration, as well as the promises in the "Pact for Mexico" agreement signed by the three major parties.

The country’s health strategy, she said, would concentrate on problems like obesity, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, tuberculosis, dengue, HIV AIDS, and addictions.

Juan and Etienne agreed that the launch of the National Development Plan was a good opportunity to make a commitment to addressing social problems like inequality, which, they said, can prevent the most vulnerable from accessing the best available health care.

SSA official Luis Rubén Durán Fontes said that to achieve greater equality in access to health care, the current health-care model must be updated. He went on to say that to improve services, the sector would streamline its administration methods to avoid the waste of resources and better use public funds to advance the National Health System.

"The Peña Nieto administration," Durán Fontes said, "is working to give all Mexicans access to a social security system that provides quality care. An efficient health-care infrastructure is also vital, to which end the administration has approved the launch of 1,448 mobile health units that will attend to more than 3.8 million Mexicans."