IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v26y1988i9p963-969.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Gobi versus PHC? Some dangers of selective primary health care

Author

Listed:
  • Wisner, Ben

Abstract

This article enters the debate concerning comprehensive versus selective primary health care by focusing on UNICEF's 'child survival revolution'. It is argued that UNICEF is dangerously mistaken in believing that its present emphasis on selective primary health care is a precursor or 'leading edge' of comprehensive primary health care. The approach of UNICEF--diffusion of a package of technologies by campaigns organized from the top down--is more likely to undermine the social basis for comprehensive care. The kinds of implementation UNICEF has chosen in order to minimize costs and maximize impact on child mortality, namely 'social marketing' via mass media and massive, ad hoc delivery systems seriously undermine the development of grassroots organization among parents and primary health care workers. Indigenuous, local organizations are distorted and limited to conduits of a delivery system. Needs are defined outside the communities affected. In addition, UNICEF's so-called revolution has in common with other selective approaches an ideology accepting as inevitable the health effects of economic crisis in the 1980s, further undermining the confidence of local groups and health workers who might otherwise conceive of their desire to control health conditions as a right. The UNICEF interventions popularly known as GOBI-FFF are 'targetted' at individuals, in particular 'ignorant' mothers. As such they are especially destructive to the process of group formation and self-organization of the poor around their just demands for water and sanitation, land, shelter, and employment. This article concludes that UNICEF's GOBI should either be abandoned or integrated into comprehensive primary health care programs that put parents and local workers in control and that emphasize continuing political struggle for health rights.

Suggested Citation

  • Wisner, Ben, 1988. "Gobi versus PHC? Some dangers of selective primary health care," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 26(9), pages 963-969, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:26:y:1988:i:9:p:963-969
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277-9536(88)90417-0
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Niyi Awofeso, 2011. "Leprosy: International Public Health Policies and Public Health Eras," Administrative Sciences, MDPI, vol. 1(1), pages 1-13, September.
    2. Rifat Atun & Thyra de Jongh & Federica V. Secci & Kelechi Ohiri & Olusoji Adeyi, 2009. "Clearing the Global Health Fog : A Systematic Review of the Evidence on Integration of Health Systems and Targeted Interventions," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 5946.
    3. Ritu Priya & Amitabha Sarkar & Sayan Das & Rakhal Gaitonde & Prachinkumar Ghodajkar & Mohit P. Gandhi, 2023. "Questioning global health in the times of COVID-19: Re-imagining primary health care through the lens of politics of knowledge," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 10(1), pages 1-11, December.
    4. Colin D Butler, 2019. "Philanthrocapitalism: Promoting Global Health but Failing Planetary Health," Challenges, MDPI, vol. 10(1), pages 1-20, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:26:y:1988:i:9:p:963-969. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.