Primary health care: whose

business is it anyway? “Health for All ” was the ultimate goal of WHO’s 1978 declara-tion at the Alma Ata Primary Health Care (PHC) Conference. Since its inception, PHC had been construed as a business of social workers, nurses, paramedics and primary care practi-tioners. Three decades later, realising that PHC failed in its goals, WHO went back to Alma Ata (now known as Almaty) and declared renewal of PHC in its annual report, “Primary Health Care d Now More Than Ever. ” Perhaps, as the WHO chief asserts, “the approach was almost immediately misunder-stood”.1 The report concludes that “health systems need to respond better”, and proposes that countries make health development decisions guided by the following broad, inter-linked policy directions2: (1) universal coverage, (2) people-centred services, (3) healthy public policies and (4) leadership