Health By The People 1977

229 Pages·1977·10.24 MB·English

A project of Volunteers in Asia

Health
bv the Peopk

Edited
by:
Kenneth Newell

Published
by:
World Health
Organization
Distribution
and Sales Service
CK-1211 Geneva 27
Switzerland

Paper copies
are $12 or 36 Swiss francs.

Available
from:
World Health
Organization
Distribution
and Sales Service
CK-1211 Geneva 27
Switzerland

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by permission
of the World Health
Organization.

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of the original
document.

KENNETH
W. NEWELL

Director,
Division of Strengthening of Health Services,
World Health
Organization,
Geneva, Switzerland

WQRLD HEALTH
ORGANIZATION

GENEVA

1975

1st Impression 1975

2nd Impression 1977

ISBN 92 4 156042 8

@ World Health Organization 1975

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ance with the provisions of Protocol 2 of the Universal Copyright Convention.
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PRINTED
IN SWITZERLAND

CONTENTS

Fcre-word by the Detector-General of WHO
..........
Introduction -
Kenneth Hf. NeweN ..............
The health care delivery system of the People’s Republic of China -
Victor W .. Side1 & Ruth Side1
...............
The national health system in Cuba -
Arnaldo F. Tejeiro Fernandez
The Chimaltenango development project in Guatemala -
Carroll
Behrhorst
........................
The Ayurvedic system of medicinc: in India - K. N’. Udupa ....
A comprehensive rural health project in Jamkhed (India) -
Mabelle
Arole & Rajanikarrt Aroie
.................
A community development approach to raising health standards in
Central Java, Indonesia -
Gunawan Nugroho
........
A health services development project in Iran -
M. Assar & 2.
Jakii&
.........................
Village health teams in Niger (Maradi Department) -
G. Fournier &
I. ‘4. Djermakoye
....................
Meeting basic health needs in Tanzania -
W. K. Chapla
;C E.
Taritno
.........................
“Simplified medicine” in the Venezuelan health services -
C. L.
Gonzdlez ........................
Health by the people -
Kenneth W. Newell
...........
Contributors
........................

Page
vii
ix

1
13

30

5j

70

91

112

128

145

169
191

204

FOREWORD

The condition of the rural majority of the population of the develop-
ing world has been presented many times in economic, organizational,
and heafth terms.
Nearly all accounts are gloomy and some describe
both the present state and the speed of change i?a a way that makes us
doubt the acceptability
or the effectiveness of .solutions.
But our
view must depend upon *what we hear and sometinles it is dificult
to
listen to, and to understand, al/ of the voices.
In this book a group of persons clcse to the villagers themselves
from many different countries have gathered to give us their examples
of possible health solutions.
The scale of their examples ranges front
the counr*ry to the village and their outlook has been properly conditioned
by both the good and the bad experiences they have passed through.
I consider that within
this diversity
of experience and outlook
there are some common messages and qualities in addition
to the
pleas for help.
We should listen to these voices and add to our own
knowledge and then consider whether their conclusions could influence
our attitudes and actions.

Director-General

-
vii -

KENNETH
W. NEWELL0

There is little doubt that a visitor from another world looking down
upon the earth would find much to be puzzled about.
He would see as
much as SO*A of the world’s population spread within a lush green area
sandwiched between the concentrated dark blobs of the cities and the grey
browns of the deserts and mountains.
It would be natural for him to
assume that these rural people were the primary strength of the human
race and were particularly favoured.
However, as he came nearer he would
observe that most of them were physically confined to a sma!l plot of land
and socially tied to a group as small as an extended familv ‘Jr clan. Rather
than order or organization, he would see drought-stricken areas side by
side with flooded areas, dry fields beside rivers taking water to the sea,
and persons sitting or waiting, apparently powerless as disaster inevitably
approaches. The possibility that there would be economic, ecologicai,
nutritional disaster, disease and death would appear to be self-evident,
and yet the people would appear to sit with blank faces apparently unaware
that a hundred, a thousand, or a million pairs of hands working together
could influence their future and stave oiff the disaster to come.
Great changes for the better have occurred during this century. We
Imust recognize these achievements, but while we do so we must also be
perceptive enough to understand to what point these victories have taken
us. The majority of the rural populations of the world do not have suffi-
cient food to enable them to have a normal growth and development:
one out of four of the children of many groups dies before the age of one
year; epidemic and endemic communicable diseases are a day-to-day reality;
and maybe 80% of these people have little or no contact at all with what
we call health technolcgy, which is so often quoted as a shining example
of present-day man’s technological ingenuity and progress.
The lot of many rural populations has improved even when viewed
through the doubting eyes of a health worker.
However, their present
state is sufficiently well documented for us to have few doubts that the

LI Director,
Division
of Strengthening
of Health Services, Wcrld Health Organization,
Geneva, Switzer-
land.

- ix -

point we have reached is still intolerable.
We have no overall indicator
of rural hopelessness. Even those fragments of “fact” that we call health
statistics are all too often incomplete and inaccurate. This is not surpris-
ing when we consider that the efforts involved in their collection must
compete against other imperatives and that they are often unwelcome if
they mainly document failure or shame. Despite the improvements that
have taken place, the ground-level view is still one of swollen-bellied child-
ren playing in the dust of the village square, of lines of women carrying
water, and of the scratching of little patches of land with a stick as the
desert creeps nearer,
It is very easy to throw up one’s hands or to shut one’s eyes to these
sights and sounds. If one uses the most simple arithmetic to add up all
that is needed to counter the worst of the evils, it would appear that there
will never be enough resources. There appears to be no starting-point,
no proper way to start. The step from hopelessness to hope may appear
too big for us to consider in a time scale of less than a century.
Some
people say that such a conclusion is not that of a pessimist but that of a
realist. Other people do not agree. Such sums and such thinking, they
hold, are products of our owa way of looking at the world.
They ignore
a whole series of factors and strengths that we cannot and should not quan-
tify and put into an equation. They ignore what has been done and is
being done in various parts of the world.
A different conclusion is possible.
This book is about rural populations but its main emphasis is upon
health and health services. The relationship between rural hopelessness
and health is a complex one. Ill health adds to hopelessness, but its removal
does not mean that there is hope. We can describe endemic or epidemic
diseases, stunted children, deaths occurring mostly in infancy and childhood,
no help in an emergency, maternal deaths against such a background as
-we have indicated ; but the background and the description wouid have
to be different if the people were healthy and strong. We should have to
add such qualities as hope, human dignity, a capacity for improvement and
change, organization and responsibility, and mastery over one’s own fate.
The problem and the priority have to be the total rural hopelessness complex
and not just ill health.
We are only slowly beginning to understand that
people themselves a e aware that health may have a low ranking among
the starting points for change.
It is difficult to work out the reasons why members of the health services
have tried to separate “health concerns” from other parts of the complex.
Is it because we do not understand the problem or feel incompetent or
powerless to influence the main issues, or because we want to “control”
our own field? Whatever the reason, it is clearly not because we have scien-
tific “evidence” that it is the most effective or the cheapest way or that it is
what the people want.
On the contrary, we have studies demonstrating
that many of the “causes” of common health problems derive from parts

-X-

of society itself and that a strict health sectoral approach is ineffective,
other actions outside the field of health perhaps having greater health
effects than strictly health interventions.
If we do not consider our restricted
approach to be valid, then our reaction to its rejection is even more strange.
As the health services fail in their bid for additional resources to further
their priorities, the health professions turn their backs on the problem and
direct their energies towards developing additional methods for helping the
privileged people who can both afford and appreciate them.
Such views could be said to be widely held, but they also are hi,
as they ignore some events +&at have been taking place during the
25 years. Individual groups and some states have tried to appro:!
problem from a different direction.
Some have tried to extend Y.
,.
including health, outwards towards the villages. Some countrrs
:ve
tried to face the total problem by an interlocking series of political, et%
!?ic,
and social measures. Some individuals have tried to build U~CVIITCP,
and
outwards with the villagers, using health benefits as trigger mechanisms
or consequential benefits of change. Health workers and health service
techniques have frequently played an important role in these endeavours.
All of us who have seen or heard about the results of these endeavours
wan: to know more. We feei that we may have missed somethin;: that
could be important.
We want to have more than purely “before and
after” data. We want to find out what really happened and why this effort
was a success in one place while it was ti failure ( mewhere else. We
rarely receive a useful answer.
For this reason WHO, as an extension of a joir:
HO/UNICEF
study
in 1974, decided to ask a group of people who par’
-ated in some of these
attempts at change to wtite down what happen
b’hile some data were
necessary t-o .nut the changes into a