Community-based primary healthcare: the key to unlocking health for all

Community-based primary healthcare (CBPHC) covers a range of community-based interventions for delivering health services to hard-to-reach and under-served communities, who often represent the poorest sectors of society. CBPHC is commonly introduced in countries with limited financial and health worker resources to effectively serve remote villages.

This report demonstrates that CBPHC has strong potential for being the mechanism through which the Global Goal on health can be achieved – extending health services to the most vulnerable in remote communities and making universal health coverage a reality. Through CBPHC, the most common infectious diseases, childhood illnesses and maternal and newborn conditions can be diagnosed, treated and referred, and critical disease surveillance and patient reporting strengthened. When CHWs are suitably trained, supervised, supported and supplied with medicines and the correct tools, they can treat every major cause of child mortality, as well as provide a wide range of other health services.

This report makes the case for the urgent need to invest in scaling up CBPHC programmes as a cost-effective and impactful means of extending vital health services, tackling disease burdens and addressing the growing global health worker gap. It calls upon the international community, governments, development partners, donors and academia to commit resources and mobilise political will to support this agenda.

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Issues: Dengue | Diarrhoea | Malaria | Malnutrition | mapd | NTDs | Pneumonia

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