Contents



Preface

The current volume focuses on public health in developing societies with particular emphasis on the challenges of public health delivery. Public health, as the name suggests, is about the public sector ownership of health delivery and general access to health mediated by public institutions, agencies and concerted community action. In the developing world, public health seeks to close the gap between health needs of the populace and affordability/availability of clinical health. In other words, apart from its traditional concerns, public health with emphasis on generalised afflictions, epidemics, diseases and infections also seeks to make health services accessible to communities and societies. Incidentally, the crucial issue of equitable access to health services is a much more acute problem in the developing world and public health services are often seen as the last resort of common everyday people who otherwise might find it impossible to access health services. The above situation entails a public health system that is severely overburdened and

Nevertheless, developing nations have demonstrated increasing strengths in their health systems, as illustrated by morbidity and mortality trends in Novel Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). To date, only about 22% of all COVID-19 deaths are from developing countries, yet these countries collectively account for 86% of the global population. Since the turn of the century, and as exemplified by achievements related to the Millennium Development Goals, developing countries have made significant progress in addressing social determinants of health and improving case management standards by taking deliberate, evidence-based and

While the focus on public health in the developing world here would seem intuitively topical and necessary, there is the need to equally appreciate that the health status of these societies ultimately relates to and affects general development. Thus, health and access to health services remain critical indicators of development and social improvement. As a result, the discourse of public health in these societies is

This book, even though it has a titular focus on the developing world, draws its case studies mainly from Sub-Saharan Africa and India. India, interestingly, straddles both the developed and developing world. However, with the second largest population in the world, it presents so much contrast between socio-economic and social groups that equally underlines another contrast in access to health: limited

Without doubt, the developing world generally faces a perplexing mixture of inadequate health delivery and predilection towards diseases and infections resulting largely from nutritional challenges, economic status, unequal access to healthcare and epileptic institutional responses to health issues. In the above situation, these nations present formidable health delivery challenges that automatically call attention to the need for a robust and dynamic public health system. Evidently, diseases and afflictions ranging from SARS, coronaviruses,

mostly under-resourced.

decisive steps.

also ultimately the discourse of development.

resources and burgeoning needs for public health delivery.
