Vanuatu’s Ministry of Health and the World Health Organisation are jointly working to revitalize the country’s Primary Health Care programme.
The partnership will strengthen health services and make them accessible in the remote areas.
Health workers and representatives of eleven local government area councils met in Sanma Province recently to re-address the need to establish primary health care in their communities.
The Ministry presented the focus on primary health care and how it can be implemented with support and ownership of the community people.
Priority plans put forward will be supported through a pilot project with the support of the Ministry’s development partners.
The plans will be reviewed on a quarterly basis and the final review will be done after one year.
Primary Health Care is the first level of contact of individuals, the family and community with the national health system bringing health cases as close as possible to where people live and work and constitute the first element of a continuing health care process.
The success of Primary Health Care over the past few years were access to community services such as, community health facilities, deployment of health workers, mobilized communities, community development projects and setting up of village health committees.
The primary health care programme also re-shaped health services to respond to people’s need such as water and sanitation, immunization, mother and child health and family planning, food and nutrition program, promoting health activities, Malaria prevention measure, non-communicable disease and Neglected tropical disease (NTD)
Primary Health Care provides an access to health services for the most disadvantage population and focus on the interventions which will directly impact on the major causes of mortality, mobility and disability for those populations.
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