Third World Health Promotion and Its Dependence on First World Wealth

Description

This book addresses the issue of the promotion of third world health. That major health problems are worsening, that the differences between first and third world responses are more largely determined by fiscal constraints than by ethnocentric differences and variations in health belief models are taken as hypotheses to the present argument. The author examines these in well-researched detail, demonstrates how they inter-relate and then focuses on possible solutions. Because of his extensive third world experience both in medicine and education, MacDonald is able to marshal a wealth of epidemiological and statistical evidence. Ideal for students of human rights and sustainability in development, this book fills a crucial niche in the field as the new millennium begins and as the G7 nations strive to protect first world gains while ensuring that thirds world access to them remains optimally possible. Professor Theo MacDonald has added to his already impressive list of publications a searing analysis of the effects of global capitalism on the health of the peoples of the third world and also of the first world. His broad conceptual approach is a major advance in our understanding of the factors which impinge on world health. The widening gap between the public service ethos and the profit motive are starkly illustrated. His examples are wide-ranging and incisive: from the effects of the export of drugs rather than food; immigration; deforestation; war; the promotion of infant foods, the promotion of cigarettes by British and American tobacco companies in China and the evolving tragedy of AIDS and HIV infection in Africa. David A. Player