Primary health care is a system that expands on primary care by ensuring:

• a holistic approach to health;
• a continuum of services;
• a range of health providers;
• involvement of the public;
• a recognition that health is influenced by many factors outside the traditional system.

Primary Care, a part of primary health care, is the care that addresses a particular problem or everyday health need. It is care provided at the first level of contact with the health system.

Primary Health involves providing services to individuals, families, communities and populations. It includes a proactive approach to preventing health problems before they occur and ensuring better management and follow-up once a health problem has been identified. Since many of the factors that affect health occur outside the health care system, Primary Health works proactively with intersectoral partners and community groups to address broader community needs. Primary Health achieves success by providing a range of services that address the main problems of the community. These services form a broad spectrum and are: promotive, preventive, curative, rehabilitative and palliative. A Primary Health model offers high quality health services as close to home as possible, at the most appropriate time, provided by the most effective combination of health providers.

Five Key Principles of Primary Health include:

1. Accessibility to services that are geographically, financially, culturally and functionally available to the whole community.
2. Population Health Promotion, including education and promotion of basic human needs such as adequate food supply, proper nutrition, safe water, sanitation, maternal and child care, prevention, control, treatment of endemic diseases and injuries.
3. Community Participation requires and promotes participation in individual health and health services.
4. Intersectoral Collaboration takes action across sectors and in partnerships that go beyond those boundaries typically thought of as health.
5. Appropriate Resources are applied including sound research reflecting on social and environmental determinants of health. Reliance is on teams of health workers and on communication and information technology.

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