RT Book, Section
A1 Evans, Tim
A1 Rasanathan, Kumanan
A2 Kasper, Dennis
A2 Fauci, Anthony
A2 Hauser, Stephen
A2 Longo, Dan
A2 Jameson, J. Larry
A2 Loscalzo, Joseph
SR Print(0)
ID 1120786184
T1 Primary Care in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
T2 Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine, 19e
YR 2014
FD 2014
PB McGraw-Hill Education
PP New York, NY
SN 9780071802154
LK accesspharmacy.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=1120786184
RD 2022/06/25
AB The  twentieth  century  witnessed  the  rise  of  an  unprecedented  global  health  divide.  Industrialized  or  high-income  countries  experienced  rapid  improvement  in  standards  of  living,  nutrition,  health,  and  health  care.  Meanwhile,  in  low-  and  middle-income  countries  with  much  less  favorable  conditions,  health  and  health  care  progressed  much  more  slowly.  The  scale  of  this  divide  is  reflected  in  the  current  extremes  of  life  expectancy  at  birth,  with  Japan  at  the  high  end  (83  years)  and  Sierra  Leone  at  the  low  end  (47  years).  This  nearly  40-year  difference  reflects  the  daunting  range  of  health  challenges  faced  by  low-  and  middle-income  countries.  These  nations  must  deal  not  only  with  a  complex  mixture  of  diseases  (both  infectious  and  chronic)  and  illness-promoting  conditions  but  also,  and  more  fundamentally,  with  the  fragility  of  the  foundations  underlying  good  health  (e.g.,  sufficient  food,  water,  sanitation,  and  education)  and  of  the  systems  necessary  for  universal  access  to  good-quality  health  care.  In  the  last  decades  of  the  twentieth  century,  the  need  to  bridge  this  global  health  divide  and  establish  health  equity  was  increasingly  recognized.  The  Declaration  of  Alma  Ata  in  1978  crystallized  a  vision  of  justice  in  health,  regardless  of  income,  gender,  ethnicity,  or  education,  and  called  for  “health  for  all  by  the  year  2000”  through  primary  health  care.  While  much  progress  has  been  made  since  the  declaration,  at  the  end  of  the  first  decade  and  a  half  of  the  twenty-first  century,  much  remains  to  be  done  to  achieve  global  health  equity.