Why is primary health care important?

Key facts, according to the WHO.
• About 930 million people worldwide are at risk of falling into poverty due to out-of-pocket health spending of 10% or more of their household budget.
• Scaling up primary health care (PHC) interventions across low and middle-income countries could save 60 million lives and increase average life expectancy by 3.7 years by 2030.
• Achieving the targets for PHC requires an additional investment of around US$ 200 to US$ 370 billion a year for a more comprehensive package of health services.
• At the UN high-level UHC meeting in 2019, countries committed to strengthening primary health care. WHO recommends that every country allocate or reallocate an additional 1% of GDP to PHC from government and external funding sources (WHO, 2019).


"PHC is a whole-of-society approach to health that aims at ensuring the highest possible level of health and well-being and their equitable distribution by focusing on people’s needs and as early as possible along the continuum from health promotion and disease prevention to treatment, rehabilitation, and palliative care, and as close as feasible to people’s everyday environment." WHO and UNICEF. A vision for primary health care in the 21st century: Towards UHC and SDGs.


EDA PHC program entails three inter-related and synergistic components, including comprehensive integrated health services that embrace primary care as well as public health goods and functions as central pieces; multi-sectoral policies and actions to address the upstream and wider determinants of health; and engaging and empowering individuals ( children, families, and communities) in its health center for increased social participation and enhanced self-care and self-reliance in health