ABSTRACT
Linked to the higher profile for primary care is the concern to be proactive in health promotion and illness prevention. Health promotion may take the form of individualist or collectivist strategies, and illness prevention can be at primary, secondary or tertiary level. Government policy has been consistently concerned to support health promotion and illness prevention but has been equivocal which approach to adopt. A primary care approach puts its main emphasis on promoting health and preventing illness, which is self-evidently preferable to curing disease. Primary prevention is the eradication of the disease agent, resulting in fewer new cases occurring. As with health promotion, some of these measures may be directed at the population at large and are sometimes a statutory requirement. Secondary prevention involves early, pre-symptomatic diagnosis of a disease, and the subsequent modification of its natural history. It reduces the number of people suffering from it at a specified time.
