How the cycle of poverty and ill health can be broken

EDITOR—To paraphrase a well known remark—wars are too serious to be entrusted to generals—public health, especially among poor people in developing countries and in the inner cities of industrialised countries, is too serious to be left to doctors and nurses alone.

We say this quite deliberately as medical doctors on the staff of the World Health Organisation, of the Maryland department of health and mental hygiene, of universities, and of non-governmental organisations in Britain, Colombia, and Kenya. Our conviction is based on many years of work in the field in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, as well as in inner cities of the developed countries of Europe and North America. The number one health problem is poverty. For the poorest countries, the health sector alone cannot ensure better health even if it were able to function at maximum effectiveness. We have to accept that we can no longer deal with health …