Cesvi supports the right to health and believes in the importance of policies committed to promoting it, guaranteeing and affirming it worldwide. The right to health, understood as achieving the highest possible level of health, is an outcome deriving from the contribute of many economic and social factors, in addition to the medical one.

Cesvi’s approach to health sector is horizontal. It is aimed at strengthening the entire health system depending on the local prevalence of diseases. Horizontal strategy allows the improvement of access, cover and quality of basic health services, the availability of essential medicines at accessible prices; moreover it allows to share development goals with local communities thanks to a better understanding of the local needs.

Cesvi does not substitute itself to the local health services and it does not create new medical structures but it tries to operate in synergy with the existing health systems promoting the accountability of the local authorities and communities. Therefore, Cesvi advocates the least invasive approach available, open to the possibility of local response already underway or that might be activated or reinforced. Moreover, it is Cesvi’s policy to integrate every health initiative, be this prevention, diagnosis or treatment with all the relevant and social aspects to guarantee the widest possible access to the basic health services, at the same time reinforcing referral structures; to support programmes that have as main objective the primary prevention and promotion of behaviours considered “protective” to health; to provide counselling, psychological, social, nutritional and working support.

In particular, Cesvi operates in four main health sectors:

1. support to health systems,
2. maternal and child health.
Fight against great endemics:

3. HIV-AIDS
4. malaria. 

1. Support to health systems starts from peripheral health centres, seen as essential structures that guarantee the access to health services for comprehensive groups of poor population living in slums or in rural areas. Interventions within this sector concern rehabilitation of infrastructures and integration between central and peripheral health centres. Cesvi works for the improvement of decentralized management of health services employing trained and well equipped medical staff. Every health project or programme always includes a strong capacity-building component. 
2. Cesvi gives priority to the needs and socio-medical rights of women. Gender issues are very important for the development of health. Women are the “point of entry” for prevention and treatment action that involves the entire family. Often a decisive amelioration in the health condition of a country can be achieved by acting on the maternal and infant sector, establishing sustainable prevention programmes, early diagnosis, medical and socio medical assistance that impact on lifestyles together with economic, health and social condition of the country. 

3. Cesvi does not fight HIV-AIDS without taking into account the other social and health problems affecting a specific area. Every programme to combat HIV-AIDS represents also an opportunity to improve the local health system and the lives of marginalised populations overall. Antiretroviral therapy, implemented in Cesvi’s programmes, tries to favour patients in their context with the possibilities existing on site. Cesvi’s success strategy against HIV-AIDS is Prevention To Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT) that in the “plus” variant (PMTCT Plus) includes all the family members.
Finally, in health policy, Cesvi takes into account the coexistence and synergy between AIDS and Tbc considered as Aids principal opportunistic disease. 

4. Strategic actions carried out to combat malaria are: prevention based on the use of impregnated mosquitos nets, early diagnosis and appropriate pharmaceutical treatments. Moreover environmental hygiene campaigns are particularly recommended for raising population awareness, but long term results are only obtained through educational measures that involve school, local authorities and rural or urban public environmental management structures.