ABSTRACT
The World Health Organization (WHO) Declaration of Alma-Ata [1] placed the development of primary health care on the health policy agenda, a development that gained further priority when evidence was presented of the contribution of primary health care to population health and containment of health costs [2, 3]. Since the end of the previous century, most countries in the world have been involved in reforms that aim to strengthen the responsiveness of their health system to the needs of their population and to reinforce the role in the community of family physicians, nurses midwives and allied health professionals. These reforms have generated experience in translating general principles of primary health care to prevailing local conditions [4], but they remain by and large ‘experience-based’: what was accomplished in one jurisdiction often remained unknown elsewhere, and might not be transferable to other settings. International comparisons can be helpful methods to clarify and appraise different experiences, using the natural variation under which primary health care is developed. This is further explored in Chapters 3 and 4.
