Report of the Global conference on primary health care: from Alma-Ata towards universal health coverage and the Sustainable Development Goals

Overview

On 25 and 26 October 2018, government ministries, United Nations organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and civil society came together in Astana, Kazakhstan, for the Global Conference on Primary Health Care: From Alma-Ata towards Universal Health Coverage and the Sustainable Development Goals. The Conference celebrated the 40th anniversary of the first International Conference on Primary Health Care, held in 1978 in Almaty (then called Alma-Ata), Kazakhstan. The Conference was co-hosted by the Government of Kazakhstan, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and the World Health Organization (WHO).

The 1978 Declaration of Alma-Ata founded the movement for primary health care. It called for health for all, and was the first declaration of health as a fundamental human right. The Declaration of Alma-Ata was the first document to set out a holistic view of health and put an emphasis on the contribution of health to economic and individual development.

There have been many improvements in the decades since Alma-Ata, most notably in child and maternal mortality and in longevity, but a number of challenges remain. The final report of the WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health is one of many reports that have demonstrated the wide inequalities in health outcomes between and within countries. The world has achieved health for some, but not yet health for all.

The Astana Conference built on the foundation of Alma-Ata by bringing stakeholders together to endorse a new declaration attuned to the challenges of the 21st century, and to rethink the principles of Alma-Ata with a deeper understanding of their practical implications in today’s world.

The Declaration of Astana was passed on the first day of the Conference, highlighting the essential role of primary health care in promoting good health, social and economic development, and global security. The Declaration of Astana reaffirms the central tenet of the Declaration of Alma-Ata: that health is a right, not a privilege for those who can afford it.