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Primary health care, often abbreviated as PHC, was a new approach to health care that came into existence following an international conference in Alma Ata in 1978 organised by the World Health Organisation and the UNICEF. The Alma Ata conference defined primary health care as follows:

"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 the country can afford to maintain at every stage of their development in the spirit of self-determination"

Primary health care was accepted by the member countries of WHO as the key to achieving the goal of Health for all.

The Declaration of Alma Ata outlined the 8 essential components of primary health care.

Health services must be shared equally by all people irrespective of their ability to pay and and all (rich or poor, urban or rural) must have access to health services. Primary health care aims to address the current imbalance in health care by shifting the centre of gravity from cities where a majority of the health budget is spent to rural areas where a majority of people live in most countries.

There must be a continuing effort to secure meaningful involvement of the community in the planning, implementation and maintenance of health services, beside maximum reliance on local resources such as manpower, money and materials.

Primary health care involves in addition to the health sector, all related sectors and aspects of national and community development, in particular agriculture, animal husbandry, food, industry, education, housing, public works, communication and other sectors.

A medpunkt (health care access point) delivers primary health care to the residents of the village of Veliki Vrag in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, Russia

Appropriate technology is technology that is scientifically sound, adaptable to local needs, acceptable to those who apply it and for those for whom it is used and can be maintained by the people themselves in keeping with the principle of self reliance with the resources the community and country can afford.

• Health care
• Health care system
• Public health

WHO (1978). Alma Ata 1978: Primary Health Care, HFA Sr. No. 1

See also: "The Quest for Health and Wholeness" by James C. McGilvray. Pub - German Institute for Medical Missions, Tubingen 1981; Socrates Litsios, The Long and Difficult Road to Alma-Ata: A Personal Reflection. International Journal of Health Services, Volume 32, Number 4, Pages 709-732; Socrates Litsios,The Christian Medical Commission and the Development of WHO's Primary Health Care Approach.American Journal of Public Health, November, 94(11): 1884-1893.