A PHM Policy Brief on World Bank’s Rethink on Primary Health Care

Has the Leopard Changed its Spots? A PHM Policy Brief on World Bank’s Rethink on Primary Health Care

This policy brief is to inform on recent developments in the policy discourse around Primary Health Care (PHC) at the global level. This could help health activists leverage some positive developments in this discourse to shape national policies, as well as alert and educate countries on some problematic aspects of these proposed design changes that should be negotiated with, or even resisted and rejected. The most articulate expositions of this new discourse is the World Bank document:  “Walking the Talk- Reimagining Primary Health Care” (World Bank, 2021) but there is one more document from the World Bank “Change Cannot Wait:  Investing in Health System Resilience for the Anthropocene” (World Bank, 2022) and a WHO document on “Operational framework for Primary Health Care” (World Health Organization & United Nations Children’s Fund, 2020) which promote the same discourse. The Lancet Commission on Financing of Primary Health Care (Hanson et al., 2022) is more nuanced on some of the key features, but essentially it is also very much within this framework.