Ted Lankester, Setting up community health programmes: a practical manual for use in developing countries, 2nd edn., Macmillan Education Ltd: London and Oxford, 2000, 334 pp., ISBN 0-333-67933-4 (pbk); £12.50
✍ Scribed by Magdy El-Sanady
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2001
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 39 KB
- Volume
- 16
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0749-6753
- DOI
- 10.1002/hpm.646
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Every year the world has a longer list of quali®ed doctors and a greater range of medical equipment. And yet every year the majority of the world's poorest and neediest people live and die beyond the range of even basic medical services. Most of this book gives practical guidelines on how to bring basic health care to those who need it most'. With this statement, Ted Lankester opens the second edition of his popular book, ®rst published in 1992. In fact, since the evolution of primary health care (PHC) (WHO, 1978) as a revolutionary concept toward the ambitious goal of `Health for All by 2000' many ®eld experiences that embodied the PHC philosophy and approach have been documented: some have become classic models of community based health care (CBHC). The writings of David Werner (Werner, 1978), and many other forerunners have offered classic references for similar programmes (Arole and Arole, 1994;Morley and Lovel, 1986). Dr Lankester, in this book, is one of the ®rst doctors to write such an extensive manual on CBHC. The book draws mainly on extensive hands-on experience in community health projects implemented in developing country settings, including the Himalayan villages, India, Nepal and Zambia.
The book endorses the philosophy that sees community members as partners in a locally based health programme where they contribute to, as well as receive, health care: in this sense, they are much more than consumers of services provided by doctors. Furthermore, Lankester adopts the community-centred model of health care in opposition to the medical care model (captured by the slogan: PPNN: A Pill for Every Problem and a Needle for every Need). Partnership and community ownership are therefore, key words in that regard, but there is a second driving force behind this work: Lankester lays a strong emphasis on evidence-based best practice, as exempli-®ed by a number of initiatives from the WHO: `safe motherhood', integrated