Questioning the Solution: The Politics of Primary Health Care and Child Survival

Questioning the solution analyzes why 13 million children still die every year from preventable causes and challenges conventional Primary Health Care and Child Survival Strategies. Too often, health and development planners try to use technological fixes rather than confront the social and economic inequities that perpetuate poverty, poor health and high child mortality. As a case study, the authors show how marketing Oral Rehydration Therapy as a commercial product, rather than encouraging self-reliance, has turned this potentially life-saving technology into yet another way of exploiting and further impoverishing the poor. The book explores the history of medicine and public health since colonial times and shows that health is determined more by the equity or inequity of social structures than by conventional health services. It reveals how structural adjustment policies and the globalization of the economy diminish the health and quality of life of vulnerable people, especially women and children. Examples from African and Latin American countries illustrate instructive approaches to health and development that put human needs before top-heavy economic growth.