Primary health care: what is it and what is it not? Views of teaching faculty at an undergraduate medical college in Pakistan.

Over 30 years after the Alma-Ata declaration on primary health care in 1978 there are still misconceptions about the basic concept of primary health care. This study aimed to investigate the knowledge and opinions about various aspects of primary health care and its appropriate implementation among the teaching faculty at Shifa College of Medicine in Islamabad, Pakistan. A structured questionnaire was answered by 70 physicians present at the end of the month seminar. Two-thirds of the doctors (67.1%) believed that primary health care involved only basic health care for common illnesses. Few respondents suggested that community-oriented programmes (4.3%), maternal and child health (2.9%), screening (1.0%) or treatment of noncommunicable diseases (2.9%) should be components of primary care. The concepts to primary health care as defined at Alma-Ata in 1978 were not well understood by teaching faculty from the basic and clinical health sciences in this medical college.