Thirty years ago next year, the Alma Ata Declaration set a new framework for international health. At a meeting convened by WHO in the capital of what is now Kazakhstan, the world's nations agreed that health was far more than the absence of disease, that it was an inalienable right, that urgent action was needed to tackle health inequities between and within countries, and that primary care was the key to achieving health for all. The year 2000 came and went with fireworks but with health still in the hands of the world's wealthy few. As the new deadline of 2015 nears, …