Breast Feeding and the Third World

Abstract

Two-thirds of the world’s population lives in the Third World. In the average developing country up to 80 per cent or more of the population is rural, living in either scattered homesteads or in small villages and hamlets. Of the 20 per cent or so living in larger towns and cities more than a fifth live in crowded tenements and shanty towns. The existing rural health services are stretched to their limit so that less than 20 per cent of the rural population receives any basic health care on a regular basis. Curative services in the form of hospitals in urban areas absorb more than three-quarters of the total health budget. In spite of the concentration of the health professionals in the cities the weaker sections of the urban population in slums and shanty towns do not enjoy any better health facilities than their counterparts in rural areas. At present several innovative approaches in health care are being developed by a number of countries in order to extend basic health care to all sections of the population and to rectify the present inequality in health care. The success of these efforts remains to be seen.