Explores the extent to which the principles of primary health care, mapped out at the Alma-Ata Conference in 1978, have had a real impact on health care in different parts of the world. While acknowledging the importance of changes in health policy and the structure of services, the book makes a special effort to uncover what has actually happened in the human setting where both the ambitions of primary health care and the true measures of success reside. The book consists of 15 country reports authored by public health experts having first-hand knowledge of experiences in the country. Written in a spirit of frank self-assessment, these country profiles illustrate the diversity of ways in which the principles of primary health care have been put to work in rich and poor countries alike. Reports from Canada, Finland, Hungary, and the Netherlands demonstrate the applicability of primary health care in industrialized countries, whether to contain health costs, reach the underserved, or reap the benefits of preventive medicine. A completely different set of challenges emerges in reports from Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Nigeria, and Papua New Guinea, where priorities remain defined by the need for essential health care and obstacles range from high rates of illiteracy and severe poverty to terrorist attacks on health posts. Whereas a frank documentation of setbacks and mistakes characterizes the report from Egypt, facts and figures from China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand reveal dramatic improvements in health. These reports confirm the power of the primary health care approach to achieve better health, whether measured in terms of extended life expectancy or a simple increase in the number of telephones and vehicles in the rural health network.

eng fre spa.

WHODOC

WHO monograph

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