Health Systems Challenges by the Intent of Primary Health Care: Synthesis of the Recommendations for Oral Health Care System Development for Thai Population

Abstract

Health care system development had been the global basic health need goals of world population by the year 2000. Signatory countries to the World Health Organization agreed that the primary health care principles were the key for the development. However, current oral health data of Thai population show gaps to the expected goal even by 2020. This article is a review of documents related to the primary health care, aiming to understand the original intentions of this principle together with analyzing oral health situation of Thai population, then synthesizing challenges in the overall development of oral health care and proposing recommendations for improving the oral health service system to ensure oral health fairness. Three challenges are presented; 1) The oral health goals should be clarified with agreement among stakeholders including individuals who own their oral health, 2) Revising the six building block components of the health system and managing these driving components towards the goals, and 3) Managing other oral health determinant factors not limited to the utilization of oral health service delivery. In the end, three recommendations are proposed; 1) The long-term oral health goals review and revision together with service delivery system goals through periodic monitoring, 2) Integrating these long-term goals with the current policy practice of the Ministry of Public Health (the service plan, the regional health, and the district health system driving forces), and 3) Providing oral health personnel with appropriate competencies for the future oral health system, including planning skill, dental practitioner skill, and the coordination skill.