Call for the revival of community medicine in Africa

In Africa persons seeking medical advice rarely see a physician first. The goal of initial contact is to ensure seamless interfacing with the other services of the healthcare system. The community physician in Africa is either a physician paid by contributions from people living in the region or, in most cases, a civil servant practicing at an outlying health center. Because community physicians often work in isolated locations, their colleagues at major hospital centers and in the academic world are rarely aware of their activity. As a result community physicians in Africa have little impact on the healthcare system. In fact their role should be to relieve overloading of hospitals that have become large dispensaries crowded with patients that have not received proper care in outlying facilities. In this article the authors call for community physicians in Africa to be brought out of isolation and given their true function as "clinicians with aptitudes in public health capable of assisting actions to restore and promote health and to prevent disease".