Primary healthcare

A World Health Organization (WHO) report once again reveals the appalling inequities in access to healthcare and the imbalance in healthcare services delivered within or between countries. It is a reminder that the increasing disparity between the haves and have-nots poses a threat to human efforts in poverty alleviation.

The report published Tuesday points out that more than 100 million people are pushed below the poverty line each year by rising healthcare costs and disarrayed systems for financial protection. And vast differences in healthcare occur within individual countries and sometimes even within individual cities.

In addition to the increasingly widening gap between the rich and poor, lack of enough attention and dereliction of duties by various governments in delivering primary healthcare to their people have contributed to such a dismal situation.