Green College lectures: 1984. Medicine in the Third World.

Abstract

The Third World, if we include China, has a population of three billion, which is three quarters of the world's population. If we use the Brandt Commission's distinction between north and south, the countries of the south are characterised by their relative economic weakness. They live on one fifth of the world's income and possess less than one tenth of the world's manu? facturing capacity. Their development embraces a very wide range and this diversity applies equally to their medicine and occurs even within individual countries, with the most sophisticated form of medical care operating beside the most primitive. The medicine of centres like the universities of the West Indies and Ibadan or the All India Institute of Medical Sciences is impressive. But such centres stand out because they are not characteristic, and I wish to focus on the character? istic?that is, on the health problems that tend to be common to all Third World countries, and the services relevant to those problems.