[Epidemiologic model for the assessment of health needs]

Health is a high priority in public health planning, a process by which health, services and resources are connected to each other. Assessing peoples health needs is one of the most difficult tasks, because of the lack of information on the spread of diseases, the seriousness of them and their capacity to disable, as well as the lack of timely and appropriate information on them. The epidemiological model put forward describes the volume of resources necessary to maintain the health needs of a population as depending upon the prevalence of diseases, the health services used to combat these diseases and the consequent human and financial resources employed. According to this model the management of the supply of health services depends on monitoring the relationship between population, disease, health services and resources.