Primary health care approach: how did it evolve?

Abstract

The authors outline some of the important factors that shaped the primary health care (PHC) approach. First, theories about development changed; rather than concentrating on physical growth and industry in the belief that as the economy grew benefits would spread to poorer groups, it become politically unacceptable to tolerate large differences in health care between the rich and the poor. Second, there was increasing concern about population growth in a world of finite resources and about the political instability of rapidly growing populations. These elements led to a trend against vertical family planning services, and towards integrated maternal and child health services with a family planning component; the perspective became child spacing rather than limitation. A 3rd factor was the trend away from technological medical solutions to more concern with social, psychological, behavioral, and economic factors. There was concern about western medical models being imposed on developing countries. In the 1960s Maurice King emphasized the need to provide basic health services in the community; community involvement was the 4th factor behind PHC. China, Cuba, Vietnam, and Tanzania all had successful community based PHC programs based on the idea that health was integral to development. These successes combined with the differences between rural and urban health status gave the impulse to the PHC approach. The 5th influence was the World Health Organization (WHO) and international agencies which emphasized that health was linked to development; in 1975 WHO launched the idea of health for all by the year 2000 with the strategy of the setting of minimum targets for food consumption, clothing, housing, and provision of water, sanitation, education, health, and public transport services. WHO and UNICEF called a meeting in Alma Ata, USSR in 1978 as a culmination of all of these efforts.