Healthcare Cooperatives in Argentina and Their Effect on Women and the Local Communities

Abstract

The foremost objective of this chapter was to present an overview of the cooperative healthcare sector in Argentina by reviewing its brief history, components and the role these healthcare cooperatives play in the society. The second objective was to look at how these cooperatives have helped women and the local communities in which they operate.

This paper has used chiefly secondary data derived from various academic papers and official and government websites which publish cooperative sector-related information. The intention was to construct a concise yet detailed study that would be of help to other researchers in the field of healthcare cooperatives since the data related to Argentina is highly scattered and frequently found not up to date.

The research has found that health cooperatives in Argentina have aided in overcoming problems in the sector such as sectoral fragmentation, negligence and frequently inadequate standards of care management as well as operational and implementation failures that the private and government healthcare players have been accused of being fraught with. Furthermore, the cooperatives have frequently played a complementary or supplementary role rather than a competitive one with the private and government players.

Through the examples presented in this chapter, it is evident that health cooperatives in Argentina are making large impacts in the healthcare domain along with positively impacting women, marginalised and vulnerable sections of the society and the community. It only remains to be seen now how far this sector will grow in the future and how many more lives will be benefitted.

Citation

Patwardhan, N. (2023), "Healthcare Cooperatives in Argentina and Their Effect on Women and the Local Communities", Tripathy, K.K., Kumari, S., Venkatesh, V.G., Jayalakshmi, R. and Sukumaran Nair, M.P. (Ed.) World Healthcare Cooperatives: Challenges and Opportunities, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 93-118. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80455-774-720231005