Primary health care, WHO and the NGO community

Non Governmental Organization (NGO) support proved critical in helping WHO launch the PHC approach in the mid 1970s. Enthusiasm for PHC led to a number of WHO/NGO initiatives which showed early promise, but which were not strong enough to survive the onslaught of 'selective PHC'. Socrates Litsios argues that PHC is too important an idea to let drop and that NGOs have a critical role to play in keeping the PHC spirit alive. He underlines that past experiences need to be carefully reviewed in order to learn how to do better in the future. More importantly, NGOs need to better understand how best to 'use' WHO. © 2004 Society for International Development.