How the cycle of poverty and ill health can be broken

BMJ 1998;316:1456 ( 9 May )

Letters

How the cycle of poverty and ill health can be broken

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR $---$ To paraphrase a well known remark $---$ wars are too serious to be entrusted to generals $---$ public health, especially amongpoor people in developing countries and in the inner cities ofindustrialised countries, is too serious to be left to doctorsand nurses alone.

We say this quite deliberately as medical doctors on the staff of the World Health Organisation, of the Maryland departmentof health and mental hygiene, of universities, and of non-governmentalorganisations in Britain, Colombia, and Kenya. Our convictionis based on many years of work in the field in Africa, Asia, andLatin America, as well as in inner cities of the developed countriesof Europe and North America. The number one health problem ispoverty. For the poorest countries, the health sector alone cannotensure better health even if it were able to function at maximumeffectiveness. We have to accept that we can . . . [Full text of this article]

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