Partly as a result of Western influence, health 

 resources in developing countries have been heavily 

 allocated to urban, medical center-oriented curative 

 care which reaches only a small fraction of the 

 population. As a result, more than 80 percent of the 

 people in some developing countries lack effective 

 access to modern health services. In some countries, 

 government budgets provide as little as $1 per person 

 per year for those services, an inadequate financial 

 commitment, particularly where private services are not 

 generally available. It is worth noting that many 

 "tropical diseases," now largely confined to the 

 developing countries, were seen as recently as 50 years 

 ago in the developed world. These diseases may not be 

 related to the tropics so much as to a lack of 

 preventive care, inadequate services, malnutrition and 

 other conditions of poverty, together with an 

 inappropriate allocation of scarce resources. 



Many of the poor in the United States suffer from 

 similar problems, so that approaches developed abroad 

 may have domestic application as well. There are 

 lessons, for example, from experience in building 

 community participation, controlling infectious and 

 parasitic diseases, and developing effective delivery 

 of health and nutrition services to both the rural and 

 the urban poor. 



Historically, it has taken some 35,000 years for 

 the population to double; today, the worlds population 

 doubles within 35 years. It took all of humankind's 

 history to reach a population of 1 billion people by 

 about 1850; by mid- 1977, the world's population had 

 risen to approximately 4.2 billion people. By the year 

 2000, the population will be about 6 billion. Some 

 developing countries are doubling in less than 25 years 

 and growing as rapidly as 3 percent per annum, although 

 the rates appear to be falling in Asia and parts of 

 Latin America. Such growth rates impede the efforts of 

 poor countries to achieve general socioeconomic 

 development . 



More than 80 countries, with more than 90 percent 

 of the population of the developing world, have adopted 

 policies aimed at lowering population growth and 

 fertility, or making family planning services available 

 for health and human rights reasons. Such policies are 

 usually implemented by means of national family 

 planning programs, ordinarily conducted through the 

 public sector, but also frequently supported by the 

 private sector. These programs are consistent with 

 paragraph 29 of the World Population Plan of Action, 

 adopted unanimously by 135 nations at the World 

 Population Conference in 1974, which states in part 

 that 



77 



