Welcome everyone, to Health for All Through Primary Healthcare. I'm going to call this the Coursera express. I think we're getting on a bus, and we're going to travel around together. And we're going to have fun together. We're going to learn new things together, see new things together. We're going to go backward in time and we're going to go forward in time. We're going to go back to the origins of primary healthcare, almost 100 years ago. And we're going to think forward about when applying the principles of primary healthcare might mean for the lives of millions of people around the world. We're going to be visiting programs as they've been developed in Asia and Africa. And Latin America. And we're going to be talking about how working with communities and partnership can make a real difference in the health status and the empowerment of local people. My name is Henry Perry. I'm a faculty member here at the Johns Hopkins-Bloomberg School of Public Health. And I've spent most of my career working with primary health care programs in various countries around the world. I've lived for several years in Bolivia, and Bangladesh, and then Haiti, and I worked in many other countries with many other organizations. And over this time I have had the great privilege of getting to know some of the great leaders of primary healthcare. Some of the great innovators, innovators. And I realise the importance of their contribution now more and more. And I want to share that with you. And so as we move through this course. I'll be sharing some of my own personal perspectives but also drawing you in to some of the excited things that have been happening and are happening at the present time. We are all priveleged to be a part of this global human family but we also realize the great unmet needs that exist, particularly in health. And these are so tragic because so many people are dying from readily preventable or treatable conditions some, so many people are suffering because of our lack of interest and compassion, and concern. And so the purpose of this course is to help you think about how you and your own situation with whatever need or resources that you may have. Might be able to think creatively. About addressing some of these issues in partnership with local people whose health needs are not being met at the present time. I believe that the concepts of primary health care, as we outline them here, and as were first expressed at the international conference on primary health care in 1978, and the declaration of alma ata. I believe that these principals deserve an increasingly strong push from all of us who are concerned about these issues. Not only from us as individuals, or, perhaps, as public health proffesionals. But those of us as people working in programs, in ministry of health, and MGO's. And maybe government officials of other kinds, donors, academics, international officials. We all need to be reminded about what these basic principals are. And how we can more effectively apply them in our work. We live with a terribly unjust world. We're all aware of this. But still the fact that seven million children are dying around the world every year from readily preventable or treatable conditions is just tragic. It's morally unacceptable. It's inexcusable, and we know that through working with partnerships through working with mothers that many of these deaths could be prevented through very low-cost simple approaches. Handwashing. 1,000,000 deaths each year are caused by a lack of hand-washing. Exclusive breast feeding. We know that mothers, after they give birth to the, to their child, for the first six months of life, they can provide all of the baby's nutrient needs through breast feeding. And when they're not exclusively breast feeding, the children are getting exposed to pathogens that cause diarrhea. And so, we have failed to get the message across that exclusive breastfeeding is a vitally important healthy behavior that mothers can undertake to. Give good nutrition to their babies and to reduce the risk of mortality. These are but two examples of the kinds of things we'll be talking about in this course that are practical, simple, readily applicable by communities. But, they need help, they need tentacle support, they need some guidance. They need some encouragement. And so that is what we'll be discussing in this course. This course is for anybody who is interested in the well-being of our global human family. You don't need any special technical skills. No formal training in health. We're here to work with you on a very simple, very, very feasible sort of a way in which you can develop some principals yourself, derived from what we're talking about that you can use in your own life and work. Primary healthcare and health for all are two of the most difficult to understand concepts in global health. They seem so simple on the surface, but when we get into 'em there's a real depth of meaning that is enriching as we think about it. And so I look forward to working with you and thinking with you about how we can utilize the principles of primary healthcare as they have been developed and applied by giants in the field. And how we can apply them in our own lives. In our own work. And so that we can each make a small contribution towards this great goal that faces our world. That of achieving health for all sooner rather than later. Thank you.