Primary Healthcare

What is Primary Healthcare

Primary healthcare is a vital strategy which remains the backbone of health service delivery. Primary healthcare is the day-to-day care needed to protect, maintain, or restore our health. For most people, it is both their first point of contact with the healthcare system and their most frequently used health service.

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 country and community can afford.

Principles of Primary Healthcare

The ultimate goal of primary healthcare is the attainment of better health services for all. It is for this reason that the World Health Organization (WHO), has identified five key elements to achieving this goal:

Ø  reducing exclusion and social disparities in health (universal coverage reforms);

Ø  organizing health services around people's needs and expectations (service delivery reforms);

Ø  integrating health into all sectors (public policy reforms);

Ø  pursuing collaborative models of policy dialogue (leadership reforms); and

Ø  increasing stakeholder participation.

Primary health care (PHC) addresses the majority of a person’s health needs throughout their lifetime. This includes physical, mental and social well-being and it is people-centred rather than disease-centred. PHC is a whole-of-society approach that includes health promotion, disease prevention, treatment, rehabilitation and palliative care.

A primary health care approach includes three components:

Ø  meeting people’s health needs throughout their lives;

Ø  addressing the broader determinants of health through multisectoral policy and action; and

Ø  empowering individuals, families and communities to take charge of their own healt