Primary Health Care

International Medical Corps (IMC) integrates primary health care (PHC) services and capacity building into every emergency intervention and long-term development project it implements. Ensuring that basic preventive, curative, rehabilitative, and palliative services are accessible to vulnerable populations, and that their health care professionals receive the education and training they need to care for their communities far into the future, is at the very heart of IMC’s mission.

In each of the 45 countries where International Medical Corps has worked over the last two decades, its international network of more than 4,000 doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals has addressed the essential health care needs of affected communities. IMC diagnoses and treats common illnesses, conducts mass vaccination campaigns to stop the spread of preventable disease, provides pre- and post-natal care to ensure the health of mothers and their children, and implements broad-based health education programming for the public and at-risk populations. IMC rehabilitates, or builds from the ground up, local clinics and hospitals, restoring PHC infrastructure and systems, and supplies these facilities with medicines, equipment, and other basics.

A hallmark of IMC’s PHC programming is the emphasis on training local medical personnel and community-based health care workers in the skills and knowledge needed to rebuild their own health care systems. IMC provides extensive, hands-on training in the full range of health and managerial skills—from public health education to maternal and child health to HIV/AIDS and community-based development—thus restoring self-reliance. Those who train with IMC, including thousands of female health care workers, go on to teach others in their communities, thus expanding IMC’s legacy of care.

International Medical Corps  currently operates community health clinics in Burundi, Chad (in refugee camps and for the local population), Darfur (for refugees and the host populations), Democratic Republic of Congo, and Liberia. Mobile medical clinics are functional in settlement camps in Sri Lanka, at multiple Afghan refugee camps in the North-Western Frontier Province of Pakistan (NWFP), in Chad, and in Sudan, ensuring easy access to basic health services for crisis-stricken communities. IMC provides technical support, training and education, and medicines and other supplies to local PHC facilities in every country where it operates.