Medicine and health: What connection?

In most countries resources for the health services are allocated, increasingly and often overwhelmingly, to hosptial-oriented medical care and drug-dependent therapy. The assumption that community health will thereby be improved remains questionable even in developed countries, and is insupportable in developing countries. Technical advances and specialisation in medical sciences are now counterproductive by pre-empting limited resources and obscuring basic needs. To re-establish proportionality, priority should be accorded to: (a) application of proven preventive procedures for hazards of high prevalence, including excessive population growth; (b) improvements in housing and sanitation; and (c) extension of primary care by medical and other staff specially trained in the early recognition and management of personal complaints and of family and community problems.