The frontline of any health emergency is not only at a hospital; it is also at local family practices. Vertical emergency programs will collapse if the horizontal foundation of Primary Health Care is weak.
To bridge global policy and the local consultation room, the World Organization of Family Doctors (WONCA) calls for:
• Investment in primary care as the early-warning system including interoperable digital health systems so family doctors' real-time clinical data triggers national public health alerts.
• Preparedness of the primary care workforce, through training and support in outbreak detection and emergency response.
• Integration of primary care continuity into emergency frameworks, to prevent the secondary wave of unmanaged chronic conditions that follows every crisis.
Global health security is only as strong as primary health care, and only as durable as the trust family doctors hold.