HOW CAN FAMILY MEDICINE CONTRIBUTE TO ADDRESS THE SOCIAL DETERMINANTS OF HEALTH? The Commission on Social Determinants of Health of WHO launched the report Closing the Gap in a Generation: Health Equity Through Action on the Social Determinants of Health

highly motivated to contribute to the welfare of the poor through a community-oriented approach, the main focus in the early years of family medicine was on the relationship of the physician with the individual patient and his/her family. It was mainly public health programmes that looked at the broader societal context and tried to act at that level. The World Health Organization (WHO) Alma-Ata Declaration on primary health care which stated ‘health for all by the year 2000’ did not mention the discipline of family medicine. In the last 30 years, all over the world, primary health care has developed and, increasingly, the awareness has grown that there is need for a specific medical clinical discipline in primary health care: the GP/family physician. In Africa, the term ‘family physician’ is used, as a GP in Africa is most of the time a ‘medical officer’ working in private or public practice without any further training after the undergraduate medical curriculum. The question is, what should be the profile of a family physician in Africa, in order to be responsive to the needs of the local population? This lecture explores this further and will look at the following three questions: