Buenos Aires 30/15
Leaders Renew Call for
"Health for All"

Health leaders from around the world called for a new commitment to primary health care as a strategy to advance the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), during the international conference "Buenos Aires 30/15: From Alma Ata to the Millennium Declaration," held in Argentina in August.

In a statement, participants declared that health is "one of the fundamental rights of every human being" and called for efforts to achieve "universal and comprehensive health coverage" using a strategy based on primary health care.

"I do not believe we will be able to reach the Millennium Development Goals unless we return to the values, principles, and approaches of primary health care," said World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Margaret Chan. "Decades of experience tell us that primary health care is the best route to universal access, the best way to ensure sustainable improvements in health outcomes, and the best guarantee that access to care will be fair."

Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) Director Mirta Roses said, "Countries that have built sustainable, equitable systems based on primary health care have shown the best health results and are on the road to, or have already achieved, universal access to health services."

The conference was organized by the Argentine government and was timed to mark the 30th anniversary of the 1978 International Conference on Primary Health Care in Alma Ata, Kazakhstan, and the mid-point between the Millennium Declaration and 2015, the target year for achieving the MDGs. The five-day event drew more than 1,000 participants from 60 countries.

Among other high-level health officials at the conference were Minister of Health of Argentina Ginés González García and WHO Director-General Emeritus Halfdan Mahler, who helped organize the 1978 Alma Ata conference as then director-general of WHO.

Chan told conference participants that changes in the world since 1978 have intensified the "Health for All" challenge, including the emergence of a global HIV/AIDS epidemic, the resurgence of diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis, and the growing burden of chronic diseases. At the same time, many countries suffer from weak health systems, shortages of healthcare workers, and a lack of financing for health care for the poor.

"In many developing countries, the health burden is growing at a time when public health is losing its capacity to respond," said Chan.

Roses said the greatest challenge facing Latin America and the Caribbean is to eliminate the huge disparities in health within and between countries.

"Latin America and the Caribbean continue to be the most unequal region in the world, not the poorest, but the most inequitable," she said. "Against this backdrop, we must build health systems based on primary health care as an essential strategy for achieving health for all."

González said that to achieve the MDGs in health, primary health care should form the basis for widespread restructuring of health systems.

"There must be a fundamental change in the strategy for producing health," he said. "Health systems are perhaps not in their best moment in the world, but those based on primary health care have the best results."

Roses noted that it was PAHO that had initiated the process of "renewal and reflection on primary health care" starting in 2003, which eventually led to the Buenos Aires 30/15 conference. "This mobilized many countries, and we became the stimulus for a global debate." She said other countries have offered to host future meetings for "the second and third stages in this process."

Speeches and other documents from the conference are available online.