“It is necessary to go pack to the principles of basic healthcare. Rediscovering the spirit of Alma-Ata means taking an essential step towards guaranteeing everyone’s health”. This, in brief, is what emerged from the meeting promoted in Geneva over the last few weeks by the CecC and the Movement for the Health of Peoples, an organisation present in around 100 countries. With reference to the Declaration of Alma-Ata from the name of the place in Kazakhstan where, in 1978, an international conference on primary healthcare was held which indicated as an objective “health for everyone by the year 2000”, the Cec delegates at the Geneva meeting recognised that “the goal has not been reached” and that “more than 30 thousand children still die in the world every day through illnesses that could easily be avoided”. As long ago as 1973, it was recalled, the Christian Medical Commission (Cmc), created by the Cec in 1969, undertook various studies into the matter and proposed healthcare programmes which the Alma-Ata conference itself defined as positive models. Hence the urgency “to reaffirm, to the World Health Organisation (Who), the commitment to support the aim of giving people the most appropriate means to adapt these principles to different local situations”.
