ABSTRACT
The fi rst “global” approach to health care was marked by the overwhelming vote of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) World Health Assembly to embrace the 1978 Alma-Ata Declaration and the objective of ensuring “Health for All” by 2000. Four key principles at the center of the Alma-Ata policies were simple and clear:
1. Health, defi ned as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infi rmity,” was proclaimed to be “a fundamental human right” rather than being regarded more narrowly from a less effective curative focus or “medical model.”
