The Salud Mesoamerica Health Initiative (SMI) is a public-private partnership managed by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and financed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Carlos Slim Foundation and the governments of Canada and Spain, which was born in 2011 with the aim of supporting the Mesoamerican countries to achieve the health goals established for 2015, especially for those women and children living among the poorest 20 percent of the population. The national averages of these countries showed positive results in health but evidenced substantial equity gaps: the SMI project focused on improving access to quality health for 1.8 million women and children in Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Belize and the state of Chiapas in Mexico.
