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The study aims to assess the contribution of local and traded biodiversity towards community health care. A total of 106 knowledge holders from the Aatha Pallar community were interviewed and medicinal uses for 70 local plants and 28 plant products purchased from the market were recorded. The Pharmacological Ethnobotanical index was found to be low suggesting knowledge erosion. About 13 plant species used by the community show high Use Value Indices. A majority of the plants used in the community’s medicinal system come from the immediate locality and only a minor part comes from the market, though ones from the market tend to have high use value indexes. The study illustrates that local medicinal plant diversity is important for community health care, which in turn, ensures conservation of the local medicinal plant diversity.

Despite widespread knowledge of the theory and merits of teamwork amongst health professionals, breakdown in or total omission of individual h e a l th c a r e p r o g r a m m e s is s t i l l happening with alarming regularity. This has a ripple effect, affecting not only the individual, but also the family, the community and the country as a whole — a state of affairs that cannot be allowed to continue.

Emerging from this report is the ineluctable fact that each step outlined is an absolute prerequisite for each subsequent step in order to achieve an orderly process of delivering community health care.

These two letters were written in response to a December 1972 editorial that dicussed the relationship between training programs in internal medicine and in general practice. The first is from Dr. James G. Nuckolls who recently finished training in internal medicine at Duke University where he was Chief Resident in Medicine and where he also spent a special year of study reviewing problems in community health care. The second is from Dr. Robert L. Evans who is Dean of the Rockford School of Medicine of the University of Illinois where he has developed a very attractive and impressive clinical training program centered about a family practice clinic. Both letters have a personal ring, since both men are warm friends of the editor. To the Editor: —I have been in the mountains of Virginia since July, and as expected, have been very busy with the mechanical aspects of health care delivery.