Reflections on Alma Ata

Return to Alma-Ata.

The ambition, which launched the health for all movement, was bold. It assumed that enlightened policy could raise the level of health in deprived populations and thus drive overall development. The declaration broadened the medical model to include social and economic factors, and acknowledged that activities in many sectors, including civil society organizations, shaped the prospects for impr...

Call for papers—the Alma Ata Declaration at 40: reflections on primary healthcare in a new era

Alma-Ata and Primary Health Care: An Evolving Story

The story of how Alma-Ata and Primary Health Care gained the attention of the world’s health leadership must be seen as one of the most intriguing in the history of health and development. The postcolonial years in the developing world saw health care that was largely hospital-based and curative in its orientation, whichmeant, of course, that most people who needed health care had little or no ...

'Health for All' Alma-Ata Declaration--an elusive Holy Grail.

Thirty years on from Alma-Ata: Where have we come from? Where are we going?

metaphor, the doctor was the drug. Much has changed. Following a period of relative affluence after the Second World War, the Wensleydale of 2008 has gone the way of many other traditional farming communities across Europe: squeezed into recession by the forces of global competition and the unequal impact of the Common Agricultural Policy. The once-isolated farming community has had to adapt to...