The emergence of Selective Primary Health Care (SPHC)

Shortly after Alma Alta a number of agencies believed that the WHO did not establish a clear source of funding for PHC, and the deadline of “by the year 2000” was unrealistic. These agencies organized a Conference in 1979 at the Rockefeller Foundation Center of Bellagio, Italy. The purpose of the meeting was to identify the most cost-effective strategies for PHC. The heads of important agencies attended the meeting including Robert McNamara, President of the World Bank, and John J. Gillian, Administrator of USAID.² The meeting did not openly criticize the Alma Ata Declaration but searched for an “interim” strategy, namely entry points for the development of specific and successful health interventions. After the meeting, SPHC became for many the realistic alternative for implementing Alma Ata.

A debate emerged between the advocates of the original concept of PHC—sometimes called “Comprehensive PHC” and the supporters of SPHC. The former emphasized the incorporation of health programs into socioeconomic development and sparking social change from the bottom up. However, the “Comprehensive”, or holistic, interpretation of Primary Health Care, was difficult to enforce and not only because of political factors. The education of health personnel, the challenges of involving community participation and the economic costs of PHC were never clear before 1980. The ideal for PHC was a multipurpose health worker operating in small health centers. They had to collaborate with lay healers such as traditional and midwives. In reality, many professional health workers in developing countries had received an education where prevention was subordinate to treatment, they aspired to work in big hospitals or private practices, and were unwilling to collaborate with lay healers.³ Frequently, they distrusted lay personnel working as medical auxiliaries.

Community engagement, namely gaining the support of local communities in urban slums and rural villages, was difficult to achieve.⁴ There was an assumption of the revolutionary potential of enlightened experts and bottomup community health efforts. The limited political power of the rural poor was overestimated. Local “Communities” were idealized as single pyramidal structures willing to participate in health programs after their leaders received adequate information. In fact, these communities and their learning process were usually diverse, and complex.⁵

GOBI—The SPHC mantra

During the 1980s, it became difficult for developing countries to achieve a more even distribution of health resources and personnel and to spend more funds in preventive care. As a result, SPHC, or a more restricted interpretation of PHC, became popular. For supporters, SPHC was the minimum package of health care services that was possible to provide to the poor.⁶ UNICEF was a leader in this contending interpretation of Alma Ata. Its understanding of SPHC was as a set of specific, low-cost interventions associated with the acronym GOBI, representing four major interventions: Growth monitoring to reduce the risk of death and abnormal growth because of inadequate nutrition (an intervention that meant the use of child growth charts by mothers in their homes), Oral rehydration techniques for diarrhoeal diseases, Breast feeding and Immunization.

In 1983 UNICEF, announced GOBI as the main tool for a “Child Survival and Development Revolution.”⁷ Several health ministries in developing countries were attracted to SPHC and launched units that emphasised one or other aspects of GOBI, sometimes as a means to attract funding under the PHC banner. Frequently they merely recreated technical interventions that were originally dismissed at Alma Ata.

Even this restricted interpretation of GOBI interventions had a mild impact. The use of anthropometry for the assessment of nutritional status was difficult for mothers.⁸ They could not always perform accurate measurements and provide data on weight-length development necessary to diagnose treatment. As a result the high expectations on the health intervention diminished.

Although it received important political support, Oral Rehydration Techniques (ORT) also experienced complications. At the time it was estimated that diarrhea took a toll of five million children annually from poor families all over the world but unfortunately it was not well known in millions of households. ORT was embraced by some bilateral agencies such as USAID, and during the first five years of the 1980s its annual production rose dramatically. However, the technique could not solve structural problems such as the lack of an adequate supply of potable water, deficient sanitation services and unhealthy hygienic practices. ORT became a remedial intervention in places where unsafe water systems persisted as in most shantytowns.⁹

Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI)

Of all the interventions of GOBI, immunization achieved the greatest success and prestige. This partially occurred because new immunization programs paid due attention to community participation and education and was no longer pledged to a rigid “top-down” design. GOBI`s Immunization efforts was built on WHO’s prior commitment to vaccination. In 1974 WHO launched an Expanded Program on Immunization, EPI, with the mandate to fight six diseases of infants: diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough), neonatal tetanus, measles, poliomyelitis and tuberculosis.

The relevance of EPI was recognized in the Alma Ata Declaration, and by the World Health Assembly of 1982.¹⁰ The term “expanded” referred to the addition of measles and poliomyelitis to the vaccines traditionally used in immunization programs. These infections were selected on the basis of their high incidence, and the availability of low-cost reliable vaccines. The term “expanded” also had a deeper connotation: it emphasized the need to increase the coverage of immunization in developing countries, train more health workers on immunization techniques, reduce the drop-out rate between first and last immunizations, and improve services in shantytowns and rural areas. Moreover, immunization recruited new allies, such as Rotary International, which became a partner with WHO and UNICEF in the polio campaign. Rotary made a remarkable contribution in raising funds, in providing a network of volunteers all over the world and in attracting political commitment to its “Polio-Plus” Initiative.

Although before EPI there was no accurate global immunization information system, it was estimated that in the mid-1970s, most developing countries had low immunization coverage; 5 per cent on average among infants (for one or more of the six most important vaccines: measles, tetanus, diphtheria, tuberculosis, poliomyelitis, and whooping cough). Differences in coverage enhanced the gaps between rich and poor nations. For example, measles, which in the mid-1980s, killed about two per 10,000 cases in the US; killed two per 100 cases in developing countries.¹¹

By 1989 WHO could point to remarkable indicators: over half of the children of the developing world received immunization each year. In addition, smallpox was eliminated from the globe in 1980, and polio was controlled in several regions of the world.

Concluding Remarks

Although PHC could not fulfill the promise of its 1978 goals; the term and its comprehensive initial goals became aspirations for health workers. As an ideal it ran against the prevailing tide of political conservatism during the decade when UN agencies were also unfairly belittled. At the same time, PHC revealed the urgency of medical education reform, the proper integration of local leaders and lay health workers, and the challenge of increasing people’s self-reliance in health.