Primary Health Care

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Primary Health Care
Health Provision Water/Sanitation Education
Programmes Food/Traditional Medicines
water and sanitation
disease control
food and nutrition
maternal and child health
essential drugs
Primary Health Care Schemes
health education
curative care
traditional medicine
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Better access to medical care is a hugely
important part of PHC and can be tackled in the
following different ways.
Barefoot Doctors These are local people who are
medical auxiliaries having been trained to treat
straightforward illnesses and refer more serious
problems to hospitals. They operate on a part
time basis, the rest of their time being spent on
farming. As they are cheap to train more of them
can be employed, covering a larger percentage of
the population. As they are local they are seen
as more approachable and trustworthy by locals
and so are more popular than incoming doctors.
Medical Centres The creation of village health
centres bases upon a trained doctor and barefoot
doctor, have meant that immunisation programmes
have been implemented against localised diseases
as well as education programmes. Information on
hygiene has meant fewer diseases have been passed
on through poor hygiene family planning clinics
have meant that contraception availability and
use have increased meaning smaller families and
preventative methods for malaria have helped
reduced its impact. The doctor in charge can deal
with cases the barefoot doctor cant, but is
relieved of less important cases by the barefoot
doctor. The very worst cases are sent to a
regional hospital.
Medicines (Preventative Curative) The
immunisation programmes carried out by these
centres focused on diseases such as Measles,
Polio TB etc. Statistics show that 6 children
die and another 6 become disabled every year due
to poor immunisation programmes, despite drugs
being relatively cheap. These centres help to
reduce this problem particularly as it is easy
for them to administer several doses to ensure
full immunisation. One of the most effective
medicines given out was ORT to combat diarrhoea
as it was cheap and easy to use.
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Gender Issues In many poorer countries women
receive less education than men, for example in
Mali there are 23 less women in education than
men. Breaking down these barriers is important as
it is the women who bring up and feed the family.
To inform them of preventative health measures
will help reduce infant mortality rates e.g. use
of clean water to prevent infections variety in
diet to boost immune systems use of family
planning to reduce birth rates.
Delivery Programmes have been delivered through
medical centres either directly in Mothers
Toddler Groups organised by the centre or using
barefoot doctors to go into local schools.
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Food We have aleady discussed the relevance of
food to health, see Task 3, but you must be clear
that it is an integral part of the Primary Health
Care system.
Generic Drugs More recently a push to use cheaper
drugs has taken place and essentially is the
copying of existing western drugs locally. With
no profits required, a relaxation of patent
rights (due to public pressure) and cheap labour
these are vastly cheaper than those in the MEDCs.
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Weve already done this as part of Task 4, but
here are the main points again.

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Effectiveness
The PHC schemes in Tanzania have been largely
successful as any improvement to health care is
positive. There were some problems.
Just getting started has been a problem though as
the country was in so much debt it didnt have
much money to start, though the World Health
Organisation did help out.
The health centres were unevenly spread out so
that in rural areas people still had to travel as
far as 10km to get to a clinic. More dense areas
had many of clinics.
The many AIDS victims of Tanzania have swamped
the health system so there is little money
available for these clinics.