Rural development and primary health care in less developed countries

Abstract

The traditional approach has been to regard health activities as a small component of rural development programmes. Under the Primary Health Care approach health is seen as the lever for rural development. But there are tendencies in the implementation of Primary Health Care in less developed countries towards limiting the range of activities to preventive and curative personal health services and of denuding it of its community development orientation. This paper highlights some of the issues that seem to militate against the establishment of Primary Health Care with its full complement of rural development activities. These activities together with the preventive and curative personal health services undertaken in the framework of community development promise to lead to the achievement of the hitherto elusive goal of improving the socioeconomic and health status of the rural population of less developed countries.