PHM-Exch> A genuine revival of Primary Health Care?

[Claudio Schuftan]

From: Alison Katz katz.alison at gmail.com

Prospects for a Genuine Revival of Primary Health Care: Through the Visible
Hand of Social Justice Rather than the Invisible Hand of the Market.

* **Abstract Part I*

In this two-part article, the prospects for a genuine revival of the social
justice project of “Health for All by the Year 2000” launched by WHO and
UNICEF in 1978 at Alma Ata in the ex-Soviet Union, are explored with
reference (Part I) to the World Health Report 2008, entitled *Primary Health
Care: Now More than Ever* and to the *Report of the WHO Commission on Social
Determinants of Health*, also published in 2008; and (Part II) to *Global
Health Watch 2: the Alternative World Health Report* and the perspectives of
anti-capitalist, real socialist, environmental and people’s movements for
economic and social justice.

 The reports are reviewed in terms of the original values and principles of
Alma Ata (social justice and human rights) and the structural foundations of
the PHC project (a new international economic order and emancipatory
development of decolonized countries).

 A genuine revival of the PHC project and Health for All - which is its
implicit objective - will not be possible unless the multiple crises that we
are confronting today – in energy, water, food, finance, the environment,
science, information and democracy - are recognized as capitalist crises and
addressed in these terms. In short, the invisible hand of the market must be
replaced by the visible hand of social justice.

* **Abstract Part II*

In a two-part article (the first part in IJHS Vol.39:3), the author explores
the prospects for a genuine revival of Primary Health Care as announced by
the World Health Organization in 2008, with reference (in Part II) briefly,
to *Global Health Watch 2* published by the People’s Health Movement, Medact
and Equity Gauge Alliance, and, in more depth, to the perspectives and
positions of social and people’s movements most closely aligned with the
original values and principles of Alma Ata (social justice and human rights)
and the structural foundations of the Primary Health Care project (a new
international economic order and emancipatory development of decolonized
countries).

 It is argued that the social justice struggle for health cannot be limited
to the curbing of capitalism’s excesses. The multiple crises that we are
confronting today – in energy, water, food, the environment, finance,
science, information and democracy must be recognized as capitalist crises
and addressed in these terms.

 Particular attention is devoted to ideology, including the distortion of
human nature and society under neoliberal capitalism, and to moral
foundations of Health for All, questions which are rarely discussed in this
context but which are central to political action towards human wellbeing,
spiritually, intellectually and physically.

 Not only must the invisible hand of the market be replaced by the visible
hand of social justice but the single ideology proclaiming the “end of
history” and, by implication, the end of politics and political struggle
must be exposed and rejected as neoliberal, totalitarian propaganda. In line
with the spirit and intention of the UN Charter, declared by the peoples of
the world, PHC was - and still is - a political project for a fair and a
safe world in which Health for All is both possible and necessary.

 *Full reference: *

Prospects for a Genuine Revival of Primary Health Care: Through the Visible
Hand of Social Justice Rather than the Invisible Hand of the Market. Parts I
and II. *International Journal of Health Services*, Volume 39, Number 3,
Pages 567-585, 2009 and Volume 40, Number 1, Pages 119-137, 2010.



Author’s email address: katz.alison at gmail.com
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