Primary health care for all: lessons from its failure to achieve its goal and COVID-19
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), primary health care (PHC) can be defined as a whole-of-society approach to health and well-being, centered on the needs and preferences of individuals, families and communities. In the last five years, several major events occurred that emphasize the importance of and the need for PHC. First, the publication of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015. One of the SDGs is to achieve universal health care (UHC). UHC means that all people can get access to health service without it resulting in financial hardship, and the WHO believes that PHC is fundamental to achieving UHC. Second, a new international declaration on PHC has been released in Astana, Kazakhstan, in 2018. This is a new declaration and global commitment on PHC, four decennia after the first declaration on PHC in Alma-Ata, in the former Soviet Union
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
The journal allows the authors to hold the copyright without restrictions and allow the authors to retain publishing rights without restrictions.
References
World Health Organization. Primary health care. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2019.
Barredo L, Agyepong I, Liu G, Reddy S. Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages. UN Chronicle 2015;51:4. https://doi.org/10.18356/3bfe3cfa-en.
Van Weel C, Kidd MR. Why strengthening primary health care is essential to achieving universal health coverage. CMAJ 2018; 190:E463-6. doi: 10.1503/cmaj.170784.
World Health Organization. Declaration on Primary Health Care. Astana: World Health Organization; 2018.
Haider W. Why health for all by 2000 policy (HFA 2000) failed to achieve its goal? Ann King Edw Med Univ 2019;25:1-3.
World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe. From Alma-Ata to Astana: Primary health care – reflecting on the past, transforming for the future. Copenhagen, Denmark: WHO Regional Office for Europe; 2018.
World Health Organization. Why is primary health care important? Geneva: World Health Organization; 2019. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/primary-health-care.
Clift B. The IMF and the politics of austerity in the wake of the global financial crisis. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2018.
Rasanathana K, Evans TG. Primary health care, the Declaration of Astana and COVID-19. Bull World Health Organ 2020;98:801–8. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.2471/BLT.20.252932.