The Alma Ata declaration was a product of its time. It came about from a recognition that, in an increasingly prosperous world, many people were being left behind. In the world’s poorest countries, tens of thousands of people were dying every year from entirely avoidable conditions, lacking access to even the most basic health services. At the same time, those in the richest countries were benefiting from pharmaceutical and technological advances that would have been undreamed of even a decade earlier.