ABSTRACT
Fundamental to world peace is, of course, the concept of human rights, and this was the focus of the San Francisco meeting referred to above. At that conference the 50 nations adopted the United Nations (UN) Charter, a document which sets forth the UN's goals, functions and responsibilities. The World Health Organization (WHO) has continued to play a key role in promoting the need to make primary healthcare (PHC) realisable as a 'human right', and indeed in this it has been perfectly consistent with the UN Charter. In 1973, Dr Halfdan Mahler assumed the mantle of Director General. He was tireless throughout his tenure, which ended in 1988, in aggressively pursuing global PHC as a priority. In brief account of the contributions of the Director Generals of the WHO from 1948 until 2006, it show how the initial emphasis on the ideology about global PHC has gradually changed.
