Under Salvador Allende (himself a physician), Chile's socialist government achieved health reforms that emphasized nutrition, maternal and infant care, environmental health, increased services for the poor, and improved distribution of care.The government also encouraged worker and consumer control over health policy in neighborhood health centers and hospitals.The Chilean medical profession opposed democratization in the health system, participated in periodic strikes and work stoppages, and criticized the government for shortages of medical supplies and consumer goods that resulted from an international boy-cott of new loans and credits to Chile.The present totalitarian regime has dismantled the health system; political repression has severely affected physicians and other health workers.Three implications for health care and social change in the Third World emerge from the Chilean experience: that health care is inextricably linked to a nation's political and economic systems; that conflicts within the health system mirror the inherent conflicts of a stratified society; and that incremental reforms in the health system have little meaning without basic change in the social order.
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Waitzkin et al. (1974) studied this question.