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Thirty years ago next year, the Alma Ata Declaration set a new framework for international health. At a meeting convened by WHO in the capital of what is now Kazakhstan, the world's nations agreed that health was far more than the absence of disease, that it was an inalienable right, that urgent action was needed to tackle health inequities between and within countries, and that primary care was the key to achieving health for all. The year 2000 came and went with fireworks but with health still in the hands of the world's wealthy few. As the new deadline of 2015 nears, …

The Indian branch of the international People’s Health Movement organisation has expressed serious concerns about the increasing trend of corruption in India’s private medical sector. In an open letter to India’s health minister, Harsh Vardhan, the movement called on the Indian government to act firmly against corruption in the private health sector. The organisation, which campaigns for equal health for all, said that such corruption can lead to substantial increases in the costs of care, impoverishment, and compromised health outcomes. It recommended that policy initiatives should be drawn up to curb corruption and warned that “private sector corruption is also in danger of becoming the acceptable norm of behaviour, to be universalized by policy.” …

Doctors’ leaders have expressed disappointment at the amount of funding allocated for health and family welfare in the Indian budget for 2013-14, saying it is inadequate to meet the needs of the population. P Chidambaram, India’s finance minister, presented the union budget for 2013-14 on 28 February. He allocated Rs373.3bn (£4.5bn; €5.2bn; $6.8bn) to the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, a rise of 7% on the Rs349bn allocated to health in the 2012-13 budget. The proportion of the budget set aside for health was 2% this year, the same as last year. The budget also provided Rs212.4bn for the National Health Mission, the government’s new showcase programme to deliver healthcare in rural areas that has recently been expanded to include urban areas.1 “Health for all …

The burden is huge and not reflected in national health priorities Musculoskeletal conditions have an enormous and growing impact world wide. “Health 21,” the health for all policy framework for the World Health Organization's European region,1 identifies musculoskeletal conditions as a target, yet national health care priorities in the United Kingdom and most European countries do not include them. To address this imbalance the United Nation, the WHO, governments, and professional and patients' organisations have declared 2000-10 the “bone and joint decade” with the aim of improving the health related quality of life of people with musculoskeletal conditions. Although one of the aims of the decade is to increase the recognition and understanding of the burden posed by musculoskeletal conditions, there are already enough data to show the size of the problem. Musculoskeletal impairments ranked number one in chronic impairments in the United States,2 and chronic musculoskeletal pain is reported in surveys by 1 in 4 people in both less and more developed countries.3 Musculoskeletal conditions were the most expensive disease category in a Swedish cost of …

By transcending physical, geographical, and cultural barriers, computer technology could help achieve optimal health for all

David Werner, David Saunders Health Wrights, $25, pp 206 ISBN 0 9655585 2 5 The Declaration of Alma Ata, to which 134 nations subscribed in 1978, started from the affirmation that health is a fundamental human right, and strongly promoted the concept of Health for All by the Year 2000. With three years left to run, the target of health for all seems to be as remote as ever. David Werner and David Sanders have set out to find out why and have come up with some uncomfortable observations. The book is illustrated throughout with carefully drawn illustrations and cartoons. Focusing on the development of oral rehydration as a valuable tool in the fight against deaths …

Editor–In Alexander R P Walker and colleagues' letter the words “Despite the fearful outlook for developing populations” are followed by “the involvement of women must certainly be supported.”1 The authors do not, however, mention women's right to control their fertility through family planning methods2 3 –or that stabilisation of the population might improve the fearful outlook. When will we grasp that shortage of food and water is caused partly by people “longage#x201D;; that poverty and violence are both exacerbated by the increasing numbers to …

EDITOR,—Staffan Bergstrom and Pascoal Mocumbi provide a telling description of the health burdens now confronting developing populations.1 Jordan affords a glaring example of the “debt trap” depicted by the authors: “Pressured by the International Monetary Fund, the Jordanian government raised the price of bread from 12 [US] cents [7p] to 26 cents per kg, and of more than 20 other basic food items.”2 In Uganda the equivalent of $3 (£1.86) a head is being spent annually on total health services, compared with $17 …