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.