Health for All Mankind​—When?

“The public health services of the 67 poorest developing countries, excluding China, spend less on all health care than the rich countries spend on tranquillizers alone.”​—Health Crisis 2000.

“HEALTH for all by the year 2000”​—that slogan has been repeated especially since the International Conference on Primary Health Care, sponsored back in 1978 by WHO (World Health Organization) and UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund). Attended by delegates from some 134 nations, that conference called international attention to how much really is lacking in the world health field.

The then executive director of UNICEF, Henry R. Labouisse, said: “One of the reasons why we meet here today is our deep conviction that the scandalous disparities between health opportunities in different parts of the world, and also within countries, can no longer be tolerated.”

Prior to the conference, a report spoke of the tremendous global gap between the health haves in the richer nations and the have-nots elsewhere. A UNICEF report that year said that in some poorer countries “only 10% of these people have access to decent health care” and “twenty per cent​—may be—​drink clean water.”

The conference called for the “promotion of food supply and proper nutrition, an adequate supply of safe water and basic sanitation; maternal and child health care, . . . provision of essential drugs.”

These are all very expensive items, especially for people in the poor nations. Where could the money for such needs be found? The conference said that “peace, detente and disarmament” could release huge sums of money for such purposes. Thus, World Health magazine, published by WHO, was prompted to comment: “Imagine an ideal world in which all the ingenuity, expense and human and material resources which are at present poured into military weaponry were instead devoted to improving the health of the world!”

But in the years that have passed since 1978, have you seen such peace, détente, and disarmament occur? Are not the nations going in exactly the opposite direction, while the problem of health continues to grow?

[Picture on page 3]

Colombian schoolchildren being vaccinated

[Credit Line]

P. Almasy/​WHO