Introduction: A note on health and development

Abstract

I am neither a health researcher nor a practitioner. My exposure to the field of health development is limited. Nevertheless, as one engaged in development planning and fascinated by the concept of Primary Health Care, I decided to put down rather hastily some notes on my understanding of the dialectical interaction between health and development.

As many of us presumably recall, capitalist development theory in the 1960s (and for several preceding decades) was dominated by the growth models of neoclassical economics, e.g. Harrod Domar, Cobb Douglas etc. These models express output as a function of labour and capital, but conceive the relationship as only a technical or engineering one containing no element of social dynamics. The basic paradigm was, of course, the trickle-down theory, i.e. that the increased prosperity of the few would spill over and bring development to the majority.