The role of health in development

Abstract

The basic needs strategy of development is directed toward helping poor nations meet requirements for adequate food, shelter, sanitation, health, and education; thus, health becomes an objective of development. At the same time, a basic needs strategy is most effective when viewed as a means to increase individual and national productivity, not merely as a welfare services program. Expenditures on health are considered as an investment in human resources, contributing to productive capacity, but empirical studies on the contribution of health to per capita economic growth are largely anecdotal, marred by poor design and insufficient data. A similarly perplexing problem is the extent to which improved health is the result of specific health program interventions as compared to improved economic and social conditions. Both are important, but their relative importance differs from country to country and from era to era. Better data and analysis are necessary, not only to elucidate the interrelationships between health and development, but to measure the costs and benefits of specific health interventions.