Preliminary Programme

This paper explores attempts in New Zealand to improve the provision of primary health care from the 1970s. From 1941 visits to general practitioners were subsidised by the government, with patients originally paying for approximately 25 per cent of the cost of the visit. Over time this benefit decreased in real terms making access to basic primary care more restrictive. In the early 1970s government funding was provided to establish health centres around New Zealand which were designed on the British model of combining group practice with other areas of primary health care such as social work, dentistry and counselling. A further addition was made to the concept of health centres in 1986 when the Labour government agreed to provide funding for 11 union-sponsored centres which provided low-cost GP visits at a time of rising unemployment. The NZMA was unsupportive of both of these measures. Through exploring the history of these centres, this paper questions to what extent the centres were successful in addressing issues of equity of access to primary health care and expanding the definition of primary health care beyond general practitioners. (Show less)

This paper focuses on attempts to consolidate the organisation, reach, and scope of primary health services in independent Nigeria after 1960, examining how developing modes of planning in international public health were articulated locally amid the politics of health care, regionalisation, and state and economic planning in Nigeria. Specifically, it examines how need and coverage, quality and reach were framed and assessed amid the shifting global and local politics of disease control, sanitary organisation, health financing, training, and the diversification of health and medical services in relation to the strengthening of developing world health services. Leading up to the publication of ‘The National Health Policy and Strategy to Achieve Health for all Nigerians’ in 1988, it offers a system-wide perspective on medicine, health, equity, and coverage in Nigeria, as these were formulated in relation to indigenous and international concerns with community health and primary health care. (Show less)