Health Care in Colombia - History

History

The first graduated medical doctor, Alvaro de Aunón came to New Granada from Sevilla Spain, in 1597 and stayed for a short time. The first drugstore in Colombia was opened at the same time, in the main square of Bogotá by Pedro Lopez Buiza.

In 1636, licenciado Rodrigo Enriquez de Andrade started the first medical university in the New Granada, in the St Bartolomé College with little success because of the prejudices against the medical career in the Spanish culture, where it was considered vulgar and proper of lower-class people. Most of the medical practice in the country was provided by people without formal education. The first medical book written in Colombia was "Tratado de medicina y modelo de curar en estas partes de Indias" by Pedro Fernandez de Valenzuela (1662).

In 1740, don Vicente Tomás Cansino started the medical teaching in the Rosario College (Colegio Mayor de Nuestra Señora del Rosario). The medical care at the time was made almost exclusively in the particular homes of the sick people due lo the lack of health institutions. The first hospital in Colombia was the San Pedro Hospital, in the capital city Bogotá. The hospital started its functioning in 1564, built by bishop fray Juan de los Barrios. In 1739 was opened the Hospital San Juan de Dios, built by fray Pedro Pablo Villamor.

Health standards in Colombia have improved greatly since the 1980s. A 1993 reform transformed the structure of public health-care funding by shifting the burden of subsidy from providers to users. As a result, employees have been obligated to pay into health plans to which employers also contribute. Although this new system has widened population coverage by the social and health security system from 21% (pre-1993) to 56% in 2004 and 66% in 2005, health disparities persist, with the poor continuing to suffer relatively high mortality rates.

The refractive surgery keratomileusis was developed by Ignacio Barraquer in 1964 in Bogotá. On January 10, 1985, Dr. Elkin Lucena performed the fist successful In vitro fertilization, that allowed the birth of the first Latin American test tube baby Carolina Mendez. On December 14, 1985 the Dr. Alberto Villegas performed the first heart transplant in Latin America to Antonio Yepes.

On May 20, 1994 Dr. Manuel Elkin Patarroyo received the Prince of Asturias Awards by his technical and scientific research in the development of synthetic malaria vaccine.

In 2002 Colombia had 58,761 physicians, 23,950 nurses, and 33,951 dentists; these numbers equated to 1.35 physicians, 0.55 nurses, and 0.78 dentists per 1,000 people, respectively. In 2005 Colombia was reported to have only 1.1 physicians per 1,000 people, as compared with a Latin American average of 1.5.