Article Text
Speakers' corner
Primary health care: whose business is it anyway?
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“Health for All” was the ultimate goal of WHO's 1978 declaration at the Alma Ata Primary Health Care (PHC) Conference. Since its inception, PHC had been construed as a business of social workers, nurses, paramedics and primary care practitioners. Three decades later, realising that PHC failed in its goals, WHO went back to Alma Ata (now known as Almaty) and declared renewal of PHC in its annual report, “Primary Health Care — Now More Than Ever.” Perhaps, as the WHO chief asserts, “the approach was almost immediately misunderstood”. …
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