Abstract:
Primary Health Care was launched on the international stage by the World Health
Organization’s Alma Ata Declaration of 1978. This paper begins by unpicking the concept
of primary health care as it evolved after Alma Ata and then explores its implementation
in Sri Lanka and the extent to which Ayurveda (a blanket term for the
traditional medical systems of Sri Lanka) has been integrated into the government
health care system. The substantive part of the paper analyzes the responses of the
traditional practitioners who were invited to explore the issues outlined above in a
series of interviews. Part historical and part sociological, this discussion of the similarities
and the divergences between the approaches of biomedicine and traditional
medicine in Sri Lanka from the perspective of the Ayurvedic practitioner exposes the
tenuous and disconnected part they play within the biomedical health care system at
the practical level.
