Primary health care: a necessary, current and profitable investment

Traditionally, the primary health care has focused on education and health campaigns, as part of a strategy to address the diseases of interest in public health1. As many of these problems still remain in the public health agenda, it is urgent to review the concept of primary health care. In the past, the control of vaccinepreventable diseases was its main success2,3. For the future, it is necessary to consider primary health care as a strategy of high impact, and to stop looking at it as a series of low-cost activities, limited to the services provided by promoters and volunteers, with low complexity technologies to serve the poor.