The text of the aforementioned article 106 is as follows:
“In health matters, the State is primarily responsible for the development of the following activities, integrating the functions of prevention, cure and rehabilitation:
1) Develop a national food and nutrition policy that ensures optimal nutritional status for the entire population, by promoting the availability, consumption and biological use of adequate foods.
2) Train the individual and social groups, through educational actions, that disseminate knowledge of individual and collective duties and rights in matters of personal and environmental health.
3) Protect the health of the mother, child and adolescent, guaranteeing comprehensive care during the process of pregnancy, lactation, growth and development in childhood and adolescence.
4) Combat communicable diseases through environmental sanitation, developing the availability of drinking water and adopting immunization, prophylaxis and treatment measures, provided collectively and individually to the entire population.
5) Create, according to the needs of each region, establishments in which comprehensive health services are provided and drugs are supplied to the entire population. These health services and medicines will be provided free of charge to those who lack economic resources.
6) Regulate and monitor compliance with health and safety conditions that workplaces must meet, establishing a national policy of medicine and industrial and occupational hygiene ”.
Medicines policy. Article 107 of the constitution attributes to the State the obligation to develop a comprehensive policy on drugs conceived in the following terms:
"The State must develop a national drug policy that promotes the production, availability, accessibility, quality and control of drugs for the entire population of the country."
Population Policy. In the aforementioned Chapter 6, there is article 108 that says:
"It is the duty of the State to establish a population policy that responds to the needs of the social and economic development of the country."
At first glance, the prescribed demographic policy only seems to have a remote effect on health. But, in reality its incidence with respect to this is substantial. Well, an effective population policy must be reflected in the general mortality rate and in the average life span of the inhabitants.
Social Security.
As we have already indicated, the same Chapter of the Constitution that deals with health establishes the right to social security. In truth, these are two things so closely linked that it is somewhat forced to treat them separately.
The constitutional provision relating to social security is found in article 109 of the Constitution and says:
“Every individual has the right to the security of his economic means of subsistence in case of inability to work or obtain paid work. Social security services will be provided or administered by autonomous entities and will cover cases of illness, maternity, disability, family allowances, old age, widowhood, orphanhood, forced unemployment, work accidents, occupational diseases and other contingencies that may be the subject of social security and forecasting.
The Law will provide the implementation of such services as needs require it ”.
Social Assistance.
The constitutional provision on social assistance is found in the same article for social security and says:
“The State will create assistance and social prevention establishments. Fundamental tasks of these are the economic and social rehabilitation of the dependent or lacking resources sectors and the care of the mentally incapable, the chronically ill, the destitute disabled and the groups that have not been incorporated into the social security system ”.
Integration of health services. We have left for last place article 111 of the Constitution, which is one of the four precepts of Chapter 6 that deals with the direct factors of health, because given its importance, it must be the subject of a special subtitle or point.
Said article refers to the integration of health services, which is one of the most important and decisive issues facing the Panamanian State in terms of health. The referred article 111 says:
“The government health sectors, including their semi-autonomous autonomous institutions, integrate organically and functionally. The Law will regulate this matter ”.