Prevención Salud is the prepaid medicine company of ICMIF member Sancor Seguros (Argentina). The organisation was created by Sancor Seguros to as a way to take care of its members and improve their quality of life through the provision of comprehensive prevention services to member-policyholders of the Group.
Prevención Salud offers its services throughout Argentina with a wide range of plans designed to cover all the needs of a person in terms of their health and they also develop preventive medicine programmes (as the organisation’s name would suggest). The focus on prevention, says Prevención Salud, is the best way to improve everyone’s quality of life.
This week the organisation has launched a series of comprehensive prevention programmes which target some of the major themes in health and medicine today.
The first of these programmes is called “A touch of conscience” (Un toque de conciencia) and consists of different prevention activities aimed to help the early detection of breast cancer. With this programme Prevención Salud is inviting its female members who are between 40 and 70 years to have an annual mammogram as part of a visit to a facility which specialising in this type of test and aftercare. The women who have this check will get immediate authorisation digitally for any necessary treatment from Prevención Salud as part of the organisation’s services.
It is estimated that one in eight women are likely to contract breast cancer at any point in time but, if caught early, there is a much greater chance of a cure. “The prevention of breast cancer, in large part, depends on each woman. But as a company committed to the health and well-being of its members, Prevención Salud wants to be close to, to inform and to accompany members on their health or treatment journey. We also want to help to facilitate the whole process for today’s women, who play numerous roles and whose time is scarce,” says Dr Matías Buffa, Technical Medical Manager for Prevención Salud.
A second programme just launched by Prevención Salud is “We are what we eat” (Somos lo que comemos)which is based on the premise that an adequate and balanced diet is essential to reduce nutritional health problems, musculoskeletal disorders, cardiovascular, renal diseases, diabetes, chronic respiratory conditions and different types of cancer.
As part of this second progamme, the organisation has commissioned a number of articles to be written for its members by qualified nutritionists and experts in this field. The organisation will also organise practical workshops to encourage the adoption of healthy eating habits. Prevención Salud is also taking part in a number of community events, especially ones which relate to physical activity, where it participates with a space called “Healthy Point” at which it delivers healthy food and provides advice on health care. Since its inception, this initiative has been implemented in six client (member) companies and workshop talks were given in 15 schools and kindergartens.
The third campaign is entitled “Increase chances of living. Donate to live. Live to donate” (Sumá chances de vida. Doná para vivir. Viví para donar) and, through this campaign, Prevención Salud is hoping to increase levels of blood donation and also increase registrations in the national database of bone marrow donors. They hope to achieve this through free talks by specialists, informative material and blood donation days promoted jointly with INCUCAI, the national donations coordination body. One year after the programme was launched, 600 donors had already donated blood.
“We also want to teach people that it is possible to donate bone marrow (and therefore, save another person’s life) by simply donating blood. It should be understood that 75% of leukemia sufferers do not have a compatible donor in their family and the probability of finding it is 1 in 40,000. That is why it is so important for people to become aware of this issue and become a donor”, said Dr Buffa.
