Vision
"CHANGE IN HEALTH, A COMMITMENT OF ALL"

Mission
Guarantee the entire population, with a gender approach, access to comprehensive care, through public health services, humanized at all levels of intervention, based on the primary health care strategy, and the development of health care functions. rectoría, management and transformation, privileging equity, efficiency and quality with warmth during care, ensuring processes of transparency in the use of resources and the development of health actions with citizen participation in the construction of necessary conditions for the social production of health ".

Principles and Values ​​of MINSA
Equity, Efficiency, Efficiency, Quality, Sustainability, Participation, Transparency and Accountability

History
The institutions of State Health have gone through different degrees of evolution through the history of Panamanian Public Health.  

The pre-republican stage (before 1903) was characterized by a greater control of the environment over man, who in this way pays a huge tribute to diseases, now preventable, such as yellow fever, malaria, smallpox and typhoid. There was a lack of knowledge of scientific techniques for the organized attack against the most important ecological factors.

In the first years of independent life of the Republic (1903-1914) limited health actions were directed from a Section of Public Hygiene and Charity and a Section of Donations of the Department of Public Works of the Ministry of Development. This stage was characterized by the dominance of the environment by man with the construction of the Panama Canal. However, there is still a marked lack of organization of Preventive Medicine and Public Health in the rest of the country, with the exception of limited attention to patients in the few existing hospitals, and limited attention also to public hygiene.

The years following this stage (1914-1929) were characterized by the development of the first cooperative program with the Rockefeller Foundation, giving rise to the creation of the Department against Uncinariasis, as part of the Ministry of Public Works, in a major campaign against this disease with emphasis on soil sanitation activities. It is at this stage that, through Executive Decree No. 46 of 1919, funds are allocated for the construction of the Santo Tomás Hospital, which was subsequently inaugurated in September 1924. In addition, through Law 12 of 1925, the Department of Health is created. Hygiene and Public Health and later, through Executive Decree No. 16 of 1927, the Sanitary Engineering Section is created within said Department.

The period between the years 1930-1943 marks the stage of development of basic health institutions in the communities namely: Hospitals, Health Units and Dispensaries. This period gives beginning to the Ministry of Health and Public Works in 1941, which counted on three Directions: Hygiene and Public Health, Beneficence and Antituberculous Fight and, the one of Benefit and Promotion, which were consolidated later in a Department of Hygiene and Beneficence with the following divisions: Sanitary Engineering, Malaria, Public Assistance (Hospitals and Dispensaries), Biostatistics and Health Education, Antituberculous Fighting, Public Health Nursing, Public Hygiene Laboratory, Sanitation and Forensic Medicine. The Sanitary Unit of Chitré was the first one built in the national territory in 1932, then that of David in 1936 and successively others, with the basic objective of developing exclusively preventive programs and completely independent of existing hospitals. In 1941 the Social Security Fund was also created, which includes among its work plan some health programs, mainly of a curative nature, designed to protect the insured population. This stage is characterized by an increasing participation of the State in the problems of Public Health, but without adequate planning and with the consequent duplication of activities and services. which includes among its work plan some health programs mainly of a curative nature and intended to protect the insured population. This stage is characterized by an increasing participation of the State in the problems of Public Health, but without adequate planning and with the consequent duplication of activities and services. which includes among its work plan some health programs mainly of a curative nature and intended to protect the insured population. This stage is characterized by an increasing participation of the State in the problems of Public Health, but without adequate planning and with the consequent duplication of activities and services.