51�Թ�

The World Bank–IMF’s approach, however, seems to have ignored the primary health care systems promoted by the Alma-Ata Declaration in favor of free-market principles.

Signed by 134 countries, the Alma-Ata Declaration set forth an ambitious goal: recognize health as a human right and ensure that the world’s population was healthy enough to lead productive lives by 2000.

Imagine the relief that would suffuse you if, while nibbling zakuski with a group of oilmen from Kazakhstan, you knew to call their largest city Almaty — rather than its Soviet name, Alma-Ata.

So why had 10 national leaders rushed to my capital city, Alma-Ata, on December 21, 1991?

And another guest, now a New Yorker, traveled to the island to recall his youth in a city once called Alma-Ata — “the father of apples.”