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The COVID-19 pandemic established a new challenge for health services in Mexico, which is why these services faced the challenge of responding to the affected people, by providing them services with opportunity, efficiency, effectiveness and safety. The Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social (IMSS, Mexican Institute for Social Security) gave medical attention to the larger number of affected people: towards the end of September, 2022, 3,335,552 patients were registered, who represented 47% of the total (7,089,209) of confirmed COVID-19 cases since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. Of all the cases treated, 295,065 (8.8%) required hospitalization. In addition of new scientific evidence and the implementation of best practices in medical care and directive management (with the general objective of improvement of the processes in hospital attention, even without an effective treatment at the time), we presented an evaluation, supervision method with a comprehensive (involving the three levels of health services) and analytic (structure, process, result and directive management components) approach. The achievement of specific goals and lines of action was established in a technical guideline with health policies for the COVID-19 medical care. These guidelines were instrumented with a standardized evaluation tool, a result dashboard and a risk assessment calculator, improving the quality of medical care and directive management by the multidisciplinary health team., (© 2023 Revista Médica del Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social.)

Background: The Global Asthma Network (GAN) builds on the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC)., Objective: To compare asthma prevalence time trends in primary and secondary school children in four Mexican centers participating in ISAAC and GAN., Methods: GAN is a cross-sectional, multicenter, epidemiological methodology carried out in groups of primary school children aged 6-7 and adolescents aged 13-14 following the ISAAC Phase Three protocol, with additional questions on risk factors and asthma management., Results: Overall, the prevalence of asthma symptoms and diagnosis in primary school children was higher in males than in females both in ISAAC (p < 0.05) and in GAN (p < 0.01), while adolescent females had a higher prevalence, also both in ISAAC (p < 0.001) and in GAN (p < 0.001)., Conclusion: The prevalence of asthma and its symptoms has increased from ISAAC Phase Three since 2003 to GAN Phase I in Mexico in 2019. These findings are in line with the increases observed in the centers with low asthma baseline prevalence in ISAAC Phase One in comparison with ISAAC Phase Three.

El suministro de las primeras vacunas de Covid-19 que se registren para uso poblacional, en el mundo, será limitado a corto y mediano plazo y por lo tanto se requiere definir grupos poblacionales que recibirán la vacuna al inicio y de manera subsecuente. Con este fin, el Grupo Técnico Asesor de Vacuna Covid-19 de México ha consultado los documentos generados por la OMS y diversos países sobre priorización de grupos poblacionales a vacunar, incluyendo los principios éticos en la asignación de estas vacunas. En el análisis del beneficio de la vacunación en relación con el riesgo de morir por Covid-19 en México, los resultados preliminares identificaron que el mayor beneficio se obtiene iniciando la vacunación con trabajadores de la salud y las personas de 60 años o más con o sin comorbilidades por década de la vida descendente, además de las personas de 50 a 59 años con comorbilidades y posteriormente la población restante. En presencia de una crisis de salud pública la estrategia de vacunación Covid-19 será completamente diferente de los mecanismos usuales del Programa de Vacunación Universal. La comunicación de la estrategia de vacunación Covid-19 debe llevar un mensaje al alcance y comprensión de todos, que transparente los criterios de priorización adoptados y el respeto de los principios esenciales de equidad, universalidad y bien común.