Acknowledgements
The World Health Organization is a specialized agency of the
United Nations with primary responsibility for international health matters and
public health. Through this organization, which was created in 1948, the health
professions of some 190 countries exchange their knowledge and experience with
the aim of making possible the attainment by all citizens of the world by the
year 2000 of a level of health that will permit them to lead a socially and
economically productive life.
By means of direct technical cooperation with its Member States,
and by stimulating such cooperation among them, WHO promotes the development of
comprehensive health services, the prevention and control of diseases, the
improvement of environ mental conditions, the development of human resources for
health, the coordination and development of biomedical and health services
research, and the planning and implementation of health programmes.
These broad fields of endeavour encompass a wide variety of
activities, such as developing systems of primary health care that reach the
whole population of Member countries; promoting the health of mothers and
children; combating malnutrition, controlling malaria and other communicable
diseases including tuberculosis and leprosy; coordinating the global strategy
for the prevention and control of AIDS, having achieved the eradication of
smallpox, promoting mass immunization against a number of other preventable
diseases; improving mental health; providing safe water supplies; and training
health personnel of all categories.
Progress towards better health throughout the world also demands
international cooperation in such matters as establishing international
standards for biological substances, pesticides and pharmaceuticals; formulating
environmental health criteria; recommending international nonproprietary names
for drugs; administering the International Health Regulations; revising the
International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health
Problems; and collecting and disseminating health statistical information.
Reflecting the concerns and priorities of the Organization and
its Member States, WHO publications provide authoritative information and
guidance aimed at promoting and protecting health and preventing and controlling
disease.
Cover illustration by Farida Zaman
WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION GENEVA 1986
First edition, 1981
Second edition, 1986
Reprinted 1991,
1993, 1995
ISBN 92 4 154210 1
© World Health Organization, 1986
Publications of the World Health Organization enjoy copyright
protection in accordance with the provisions of Protocol 2 of the Universal
Copyright Convention. For rights of reproduction or translation of WHO
publications, in part or in toto, application should be made to the Office of
Publications, World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland. The World Health
Organization welcomes such applications.
The designations employed and the presentation of the material
in this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the
part of the Secretariat of the World Health Organization concerning the legal
status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or
concerning the delimitation of its frontiers.
TYPESET IN INDIA PRINTED IN ENGLAND
85/6639 91/8750
93/953-13000
95/10712 - Spottiswoode/TWC - 3OOO
A number of the illustrations in this volume reproduce or are
based on illustrations in King, M. et al., Primary child care. A manual for
health workers, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1978, by kind permission of the
publishers.