Primary Health Care Values

405 Words2 Pages
The PHC values to achieve health for all require health systems that: “Put people at the centre of health care”3. What people consider desirable ways of living as individuals and what they expect for their societies – i.e. what people value – constitute important parameters for governing the health sector. PHC has remained the benchmark for most countries’ discourse on health precisely because the PHC movement tried to provide rational, evidence-based and anticipatory responses to health needs and to these social expectations4,5,6,7. Achieving this requires trade-offs that must start by taking into account citizens’ “expectations about health and health care” and ensuring “that [their] voice and choice decisively influence the way in which health services are designed and operate”8. A recent PHC review echoes this perspective as the “right to the highest attainable level of health”, “maximizing equity and solidarity” while being guided by “responsiveness to people’s needs”4 http://www.who.int/whr/2008/overview/en/ The World Health Report 2008 - primary Health Care (Now More Than Ever) Social Values can be interpreted as judgements made on the basis of moral or ethical values of a particular society. Each society influenced by its social, cultural, religious and institutional characteristics, has its own way to give particular form to “universal” moral values like, for example, justice. (Clark and Weale, 2012). These days, health systems all around the world are facing the problem of how to set priorities in the allocation of Health Care resources in order to offer high quality of care to those who need it, and at a cost that their governments can afford and all this happens in a time where people not only live longer but also has greatest expectations about the care they should receive and the health care innovation offers broader options for interventions.
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