Primary health care (PHC) is an important approach among the alternative approaches towards meeting the basic health needs in developing countries. Worldwide, increasing recognition of the failure of existing health services to provide health care, alternative ideas and methods to provide health care have been considered and tried.
In 1978 at Alma- Ata (USSR), a joint WHO-UNICEF international conference was held, the governments of 134 countries and many of these agencies called for a revolutionary approach to health care. Declaring that “ The existing gross inequality in the health status of people particularly between developed and developing countries as well as within countries is politically, socially and economically unacceptable”, the Alma-Ata conference called for acceptance of the WHO goal of Health for All by
2000 AD and proclaimed primary health care as way to achieving Health for All: Primary health care considered to be the new approach to health care, which integrates at the community level all the factors required for improving the health status of the population. The Alma-Ata Declaration has called on all governments to formulate national policies, strategies and plans of action to launch and sustain primary health care as a part of national health system. Each country was asked to innovate, according to its own circumstances to provide Primary health care.
Key words: Primary health care, rural health, community health
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