Primary care at the crossroads: deploy its transforming potential or be instrumented in a new privatization offensive

ABSTRACT

After 40 years of settlement in the sanitary firmament the Primary Health Care (PHC) faces, as never before, the possibility to be re written. It isn't the same context when PHC was reaffirmed as in the 25th anniversary (Pan American Health Organization - Paho) or widen as in its 30th anniversary (World Health Organization -WHO); instead of it, we see an intent to re-edit the gestures and the symbols of those historical meeting of Alma Ata in 1978, but this time, it will take place in the city of Astana. The international context couldn't be more different from those in 1978. That's why it exists funded fears that the new statement will become a backward from the strength of the original statement. Unless this is what we can presume after reading the first paper of WHO for this meeting where it tries to subsume PHC to Universal Health Coverage, a controversial initiative of WHO and the World Bank. As it was and it always be, the final outcome, in fact, will depend of the way the communities and the health workers translate the proposal to every concrete practice scenario.

KEYWORDS
Public health policy; Health advocacy; Primary Health Care; Global health