Incorporation of the intercultural approach to the health care system Incorporación del enfoque intercultural al sistema de atención de salud

Abstract

Incorporating the intercultural approach in health care is a challenge due to its ideological, political and technical implications. This essay reflected on what happens in this regard in Peru to answer questions such as: Are there regulations on interculturality in health? How to appropriately adapt health services for intercultural care? What are the aspects or knots that arise when providing intercultural health care? How to incorporate the intercultural approach in the training of health personnel? Provide suggestions to decision makers and health personnel so that this approach is practiced in the daily life of health care, especially for indigenous peoples. Using the Google Scholar engine and having the language and time of publication as exclusion criteria, 25 scientific articles were downloaded and read whose content was related to interculturality and/or health, in addition to national regulations of the health sector with respect to interculturality.
It was found that there is a legal framework in health on interculturality but that the gaps in infrastructure and equipment make it difficult to put it into practice; that health services should be adapted to intercultural care, in addition to evaluating the curricula of health personnel training centers to verify that this approach is included, that a health system could be created with two subsystems, one national and the other for indigenous peoples and that it is urgent to unify access to health care for the Peruvian population.