Childhood health and the pediatrician in the French sanitary system

The French Health Service obtains very good sanitary results with a different model from the Spanish National Health Service, integrating the private and public sectors in the different care levels and with a primary health care mainly based on sanitary liberal professionals. With regard to funding, France offers a social protection system similar to that of the rest of European countries, which supports most of the sanitary expense and protects the economically disadvantaged population. Differently to Spain nevertheless, the participation of the user by means of payment for act and the use of the moderating ticket is one of its basic props. Other fundamental principle of the system is the freedom of installation and exercise of the doctors, as well as the patient´s free election of doctors. The primary health care of the infancy is shared by general doctors and paediatricians, due to the low number of the latter in the system. The prevention and the promotion of the Health is also realized by the ?Mother-Child Protection Service? and the ?School Health Service?, two very important instruments of the French sanitary policy, thanks to which big sanitary advances for the infancy have been made in the last decades. In general, the global state of the health of the infancy is good, but there is still a lot of work to do in order to decrease the socio-economic or geographical inequalities, and to improve the general access to the sanitary services for everybody under the same conditions.