Provision of Primary Healthcare services is the backbone of any economy’s growth and development. Primary healthcare includes the day-to-day care needed to prevent, maintain, or cure any health issues. India was one of the first countries to recognize the merits of primary healthcare approach. The concept of primary healthcare system was introduced in India by Bhor e Committee in 1946. India adopted the primary healthcare model following the belief that poverty must not be the reason for inaccessibility of health services. The primary healthcare system in India has evolved over a period of time. Even though the primary healthcare sector has seen constant improvements post-Independence, but the challenges for the primary healthcare system in current scenario and in future cannot be ignored.

The Declaration of Alma-Ata in 1978 promoted the provision of basic medical care and healthcare services. Various efforts and experiments by the Government of India were initiated to provide basic health facilities for all citizens. The goal of these initiatives was to provide quality primary healthcare services that can be accessible and affordable by all citizens in both rural and urban India. Identifying the importance of healthcare in the process of economic and social development; and to improve the quality of life of our citizens, the Government of India came up with the launch of National Rural Health Mission in 2005 to ensure necessary infrastructure in the primary healthcare system.

India being a country with large population, delivering quality primary healthcare is a challenging task. In India, communicable diseases and nutritional deficiencies are found to be an important cause of deaths. Non-communicable diseases, cardiovascular diseases, respiratory disorders, cancers, and injuries are also showing the rising trends. Diseases that involve mental health disorders due to stress, depression etc are also taking a substantial toll on human lives. Rapid urbanization in the recent decades has led one-fourth of the urban population to live in slums where health and sanitary conditions are hazardous. This is a very serious challenge to the current primary healthcare system in India. It has also been observed that there is a very poor level of patient satisfaction in rural as well as urban areas of India regarding primary healthcare services. Satisfaction in terms of the quality of healthcare needs to be addressed in order to improve primary healthcare services.

There is an immediate need to address inadequate infrastructure and manpower in order to provide better service and delivery of primary healthcare

The prevailing primary healthcare infrastructure and manpower are also very deficient.

As on 2017, India's population is approximately 134 crores. There is an immediate need to address inadequate infrastructure and manpower in order to provide better service and delivery of primary healthcare.

The current primary healthcare structure is very rigid and unsuccessful in addressing the needs effectively. The unavailability of resources is a major factor leading to the poor performance of the primary healthcare system. There is a need to understand the strengths and challenges that bring or drive away people from visiting health facilities and care centers. Now the challenge for India is to decide how to rectify, restore and plan primary healthcare system to deliver best quality services to people, ensuring facilities accessible to all, along with efficiency and effectiveness through qualified and sufficient healthcare staff. A joint effort by the state and the central government can be put into action to redefine the primary healthcare system. Thus, it would not be wrong to say that the success of primary healthcare systems lies in allocating the existing potential to use and making appropriate structural changes.