Primary Health Care
The goal of all of our programs is to strengthen primary health care for all, especially the poor and vulnerable. We do this by partnering with ministries of health and integrating key services (HIV, maternal and child care) into the foundation of routine primary health care services.
Rather than developing separate programs, staffing and health facilities for specific diseases (sometimes referred to as "siloes"), we help governments to combine services together and offer them in one place so people can more easily access them.
In 1978, the international community affirmed the importance of primary health care at a meeting held in Alma-Ata in Kazakhstan (today called Almaty). The Alma-Ata Declaration states that governments are responsible for the health of their people, and identifies primary health care as the means to ensure health for all:
"Primary health care is essential health care based on practical, scientifically sound and socially acceptable methods and technology made universally accessible to individuals and families in the community through their full participation and at a cost that the community and country can afford to maintain at every stage of their development in the spirit of self-reliance and self-determination. It forms an integral part both of the country's health system, of which it is the central function and main focus, and of the overall social and economic development of the community. It is the first level of contact of individuals, the family and community with the national health system bringing health care as close as possible to where people live and work, and constitutes the first element of a continuing health care process."