** A short blog post & presentation are far too brief of formats to discuss this extensive topic adequately. The following is an overview of Chapter 1 from Dr. Joia S. Mukherjee’s book entitled An Introduction to Global Health Delivery. **

To simply explain LMIC (lower middle-income country) Health Systems today, it is important to review the history of slavery and colonialism which led to years of resource extraction ultimately resulting in weak health systems seen in LMIC countries today.

Prior to World War II, the conduct of a government against its own people was considered a matter of national sovereignty, however global opinion changed following the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps. After WWII, it was believed that all people, regardless of their country of origin, have an inalienable set of human rights. These principles were upheld in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.

“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”

The same European countries that were championing human rights had little issue with the continuation of colonialism and denying those who were colonized their human rights. Importantly, only four independent African countries were able to vote for the Declaration (South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Liberia). 

In 1978, the International Conference on Primary Health Care was held in Alma Ata (currently Almary, Kazakhstan). The conference hosted 600 representatives from the 150 WHO member states and aimed to discuss models for care delivery and develop solutions for people living without access to health care.  

In parallel to the Cold War, socialist republics advocated for government funds to deliver on the promise of health as a human right by building public health systems with doctors, nurses, and hospitals while capitalist states argued that health systems could not be built until economic growth occurred and reasoned that volunteers could be used to deliver basic health services in impoverished countries. 

It is important to note a majority of delegates advocated for the public provision of health as a human right and the Alma Ata Declaration is the result. It advocated for health as a human right and included the need to address the social factors related to ill health, such as lack of food, water, and sanitation. The declaration set modest yet concrete goals like 90 percent of children should have weight for an age that corresponds to reference values, every family should be within a 15-minute walk of potable water, and women should have access to medically trained attendants for childbirth.

The concept that health demanded more resources than those available within an impoverished country’s budget and that health should be financed through international collaboration were radical notions. Several factors impacted the Alma Ata Declaration including physician opposition, Cold War geopolitics, and neoliberal reforms. 

In 1979, a proposed alternative to the Alma Ata Declaration was published in the New England Journal of Medicine entitled ‘Selective Primary Health Care — An Interim Strategy for Disease Control in Developing Countries.’ It praised the goals of Alma Ata as laudable, but ascertained the objective was unrealistic given the impoverishment of those countries with the highest disease burden. This publication countered that it is more realistic to target scarce resources to prevent and control the spread of diseases that account for the highest mortality and morbidity. Selective Primary Health Care became the new standard for global health efforts for years to come. 

“It is impossible to understand global health delivery without understanding the destructive history of slavery, colonialism, and neoliberalism that left governments impoverished and unable to fulfill the right to health.”