Health Component

PROSPERA, through the healthcare sector, performs actions to grant access to healthcare services for the beneficiary families and promote disease prevention. The Health Component only applies in the co-responsibility scheme, and operates under three specific strategies.

The first strategy is healthcare attention and consists in providing the Basic Guaranteed Healthcare Package, free of charge. It also entails the progressive enlargement to the 27 Public Healthcare Intervention Services from the Mexican Universal Catalogue of Healthcare Services (CAUSES), which constitutes a benefit that is related to the National Health Card, and considers age, sex and life event for each person. These actions are mainly preventive and aim at the promotion and timely detection of diseases of great impact on public health. However, through this strategy those patients with conditions that are part of the CAUSES, are treated and monitored to ensure their wellbeing.

The second strategy is prevention and attention to poor nutrition and it is focused on promoting better nutrition of the beneficiary population, specially to prevent and treat malnutrition and obesity of infants since pregnancy. This is done through the monitoring of the nutritional status and the delivery of dietary supplements to pregnant and breastfeeding women, as well as infants between 6 and 59 months old. The benefits for these women are granted for up to one year, as well as continuous monitoring for cases where women suffer from malnutrition.

The tracking of the nutritional status of pregnant and breastfeeding women as well as that of infants below five years old is achieved through continuous medical and lab appointments. The nutritional status is assessed in accordance with the applicable Mexican Official Norms as well as international Standards.

The third strategy is promoting health self-care, and it aims at improving health self-care among the beneficiary families and their communities through educational communication strategies on different health related topics, giving special importance to nutritional education, promotion of healthcare, disease prevention and the commitment of chronic patients to their treatments.

To achieve its goals, self-care practices are reinforced through Community Workshops on Health Self-Care, information, guidance and individual counseling during medical appointments. Also collective messages are directed to the beneficiary families in accordance with age, sex and life event.

Furthermore, through this Health Component, PROSPERA grants financial aid every two months to people over 70 years old, who are members of the beneficiary families. This aid is only granted if they are not beneficiaries of the Program of Pension for Elderly Adults of SEDESOL.