[From emergency care to primary health care. Difficulties, pitfalls and stakes]

In the last years thoughts about emergency medical aid have been developed a lot: i) the similarity of emergency health interventions and primary health care (P.H.C.): ii) the necessity of considering emergency health interventions in a long-term developmental perspective have been more and more stressed. Nevertheless important differences between emergency and long-term interventions do exist and it would be useless to deny them by artificially placing emergency health interventions under the aegis of primary health care. If there is any similarity between both of them, it is actually between emergency health interventions and "selective primary health care" (here labelled "selective health interventions"). This similarity lies in the fact that a conceptual as well as operational link is possible between emergency interventions and selective ones. In so far as one's judgement about selective health interventions is rather negative, this similarity appears to be more dangerous than favourable. Furthermore, if the specificity of emergency aid is fully recognized, it could be ineffective to try to implement it as PHC. This paper proposes criteria to distinguish primary health care, selective health interventions and emergency aid.