Vatican official calls for universal health-care coverage
May 23, 2012
Speaking May 23 to a meeting of the World Health Assembly in Geneva, the Vatican’s representative called for universal access to affordable health-care coverage.
Archbishop Zygmunt Zimoski, the president of the Pontifical Council for Health Care, said that wealthy nations should help impoverished countries to provide full health-care coverage for their people.
Archbishop Zimoski did not specify what form this health-care coverage should take. But he did say that it “cannot be the effort of the state machinery alone.” The Vatican delegate said that private health-care providers must be part of the overall solution. He added that the Catholic Church is the leading provider of health-care services in the world’s less developed countries, and said that governments should support Catholic and other religious institutions that are active in the health-care field “without obliging them to participate in activities they find morally abhorrent.”
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