June 2015: after taking up the post of Director of Foreign Travel at the Social Health Insurance Institute (Seguro Social de Salud – EsSalud), I had the following experience: a patient had come back from a foreign country after spending a month there and I decided to go with him to his first check-up in Peru. The attending doctor looked at me and asked “What do you want me to do with this patient? He has had a type of treatment that we don’t use in this country and I’m not familiar with it.

Since 2014, a cash benefit allowance is paid to millions of recipients in the month of March of every year to the most needy people and families. This benefit is called the “March Permanent Family Benefit” (Aporte Familiar Permanente Marzo – AFPM) which consolidates through the use of better technology the payment of various extraordinary allowances dating back to 2009 by standardizing the process, setting the selection criteria for beneficiaries, and issuing beneficiaries’ lists.

Within the framework of the Comprehensive Policy on Care for the Elderly (Política Integral de Atención a los Adultos Mayores), and in order to extend training to all those who need to take care of older persons, the State Employees’ Social Security and Social Services Institute (Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Trabajadores del Estado – ISSSTE) offers a multimedia course, which is available in the institutional portal.

The Historical Reparation for Retirees and Pensioners Act (Ley de Reparación Histórica para Jubilados y Pensionados) of June 2016 provides for the current pension benefits of retirees and pensioners to be fully recalculated and where the discrepancies are in the beneficiaries’ favour, settlement offers are offered and which are then subject to judiciary approval to avoid future litigation.

The Social Protection Longitudinal Survey (Encuesta Longitudinal de Protección Social – ELPS) was part of the “support program for better management of the social protection system”, which aims to strengthen the capacity to formulate and implement policies on social security, education, housing, employment, health, disability, and care among other things. Therefore, the conditions and capacities required to continue with future ELPS phases were generated, with the Social Insurance Bank (Banco de Previsión Social – BPS) as the managing institution.

The IMSS Digital mobile application is part of the modern model of digital care strategy implemented by the Mexican Social Security Institute (Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social – IMSS) in 2013. The IMSS Digital application is a digital channel aimed at the Institute’s strategic objective of deregulating, streamlining and digitizing services and procedures in order to reduce costs and processing times, and enhance quality and user-friendly services. 

The National Historical Reparation Programme  (Programa Nacional de Reparación Histórica) was established with the aim of implementing settlement agreements between the National Social Security Administration (Administración Nacional de la Seguridad Social ‒ ANSES) and retirees/pensioners to adjust their pensions and to settle pension debts owed to beneficiaries who voluntarily participated and met the criteria laid out in Act No. 27.260.

Often, the interests of workers and employers are not the same, so addressing absenteeism as it relates to the health and safety of workers is an ethical and social commitment.

This good practice aims to reduce absenteeism arising from respiratory, musculoskeletal, mental and cardiac diseases, which are among the most frequent conditions among workers of the Catholic Workers’ Circle of the Uruguay Mutual Fund (Círculo Católico de Obreros del Uruguay Mutualista – CCOUM).

Technical aid or support products are among the most important factors in terms of human development for disabled and elderly persons. The objective is to mitigate or compensate for limitations when performing various activities of daily living such as eating, dressing, personal hygiene, mobility for the bedridden, play and leisure time, productivity and work activities as well as improving independence and quality of life.

The national reference center for birth defects and rare diseases (Centro de Referencia Nacional de Defectos Congénitos y Enfermedades Raras – CRENADECER) is a unit of the Social Insurance Bank (Banco de Previsión Social – BPS). The center for access to assistive technologies (Centro de Acceso a Tecnologías de Apoyo – CATA) is located therein, and its goal is to approach disability in a way that promotes equal opportunities in relation to technology, using computers to assist with rehabilitation.