Primary health care and primary care: a confusion of philosophies.

I 1978 the term primary health care (PHC) was coined by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) in the World Health Assembly, which included 25 member countries and organizations.’ At that time, member countries expressed outrage at the low life-expectancy averages and the high mortality rates among children of a majority of the world’s population, whose living conditions were substan dard and improverished.? It was acknowledged that advances in science had helped eradicate many of the ma jor communicable diseases, but it was noted that the most dramatic decreases