The secondary importance of primary health care in South Cameroon

Primary health care in Cameroon meets with serious obstacles. The state gives it a low priority in its budget and over-all policy. The health institutions are rarely active in this field. Institutions which do practice some primary health care are usually foreign. The villagers, finally, are little interested. They insist only on improvement of curative services and material life conditions. The conclusion is that primary health care is regarded as something of secondary importance. First comes a better life. The research for this paper was conducted in 1980 in the South of Cameroon.

The relationship of U.S. aid, trade and investment to migration pressures in major sending countries

"It has often been suggested that U.S. foreign economic policies, including the areas of aid, trade and investment, could be utilized to influence migration pressures in major sending countries. This study explores the feasibility of this proposition by examining the linkages between these U.S. economic instruments and migration 'push' factors. These linkages are shown to be indirect, are often quite complex, and the final impact on migration, except perhaps in the long run, is probably small in most cases."

The impact of food aid on world malnutrition

Does food aid enhance or diminish the nutritional status of recipient populations in less developed countries? In proposing that the long-term impact is negative, critics have argued that aid depresses local food production, is maldistributed and mismanaged such that it does not reach the needy in sufficient quantities, or, where effective, that aid merely reduces the death rate relative to the birth rate, permitting more people to survive at the margin of existence. This study explores the long-term impact of U.S. Public Law 480 food aid through a crossnational analysis of aggregate data on aid receipts and change in nutritional status over the period from 1962 through 1974. Alternative hypotheses are tested through least squares methods and.mean difference tests in the framework of a nonequivalent control group, quasi-experimental design. This study supports the following generalizations: food aid is significantly related with improved nutritional status; the greater the aid, the greater the improvement in nutrition; higher aid recipients do not have significantly lower rates of growth in domestic food production; higher aid recipients do not have higher rates of population growth; and food aid may lead to greater meat consumption among higher aid recipients. Negative effects, experienced in some countries at some times, are not systematically incurred by all food aid recipients over time. In general, food aid does improve nutrition.

The rationale for international assistance to population programs in the developing world

This article reexamines the rationale for international assistance to population programs in the developing world. Defining the idea of development as a rationally guided effort toward better human conditions, population work is justified if it improves the welfare of the individual family. The renewed interest in providing family planning as part of comprehensive health and nutrition programs reinforces this approach. Allocation of funds for control of fertility is also justified on societal grounds. Excessive population growth hinders poor nations in their quest for adequate food supplies, job opportunities, education, and the other goals of development. It is argued, however, that fertility reduction is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition to achieve improved levels of living in poor countries; birth control should not be considered a substitute for traditional modes of development assistance, nor as a divergence from needed social and economic reform. A new approach to development assistance emphasizing equity in income distribution, even at the expense of overall increases in gross national product, suggests new hope for social justice as well as for the long-run reduction of fertility.

The United States commitment to international family planning and population programs

The United States Government has moved in a decade and a half from a policy of sharp repudiation of birth control to broad federal support for family planning at home and overseas. Private organizations and members of Congress were influential in urging government agencies to act. Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon gave high level support. Throughout the country, the concept that nations and families could help to improve their economic position and the quality of life by avoiding unwanted children was widely accepted. For a number of reasons, Congressional support of family planning is strong even though other economic pressures may reduce foreign aid and domestic health and welfare expenditures. Since family planning is an important element in development programs, successes in this field could encourage continuing U.S. support for overseas assistance in general.

The United Nations Fund for Population Activities

As of the end of January 1973, the United Nations Fund for Population Activities was supporting almost 600 population projects in 76 developing countries and areas, with cumulative resources of more than $80 million contributed by 60 governments. The rapid expansion of resources and activities experienced by the Fund since its inception five years ago is evidence of the remarkable rate at which international concern for world population problems, once aroused, has been translated into action. The Fund, as the recognized focal point of population efforts of the United Nations system, has moved further toward its objective of encouraging universal participation in population activities. The Fund provides assistance to governments in the areas of collecting basic population data, population dynamics, population policy, education and communication, multisector activities, and, most extensively, family planning. The Fund's continuing role as a major multilateral source of assistance in the population field was confirmed in December 1972, when the United Nations General Assembly changed the Fund from a trust fund of the Secretary-General to a fund under the authority of the Assembly itself.

Introductory statement: hopes, expectations, and realities--the record of bilateral population assistance

The creation of the Population Council more than 20 years ago symbolizes the traversal of a watershed in the initiation of major American bilateral assistance in the population field. A number of forces, some of which had been increasing modestly during the previous generation, converged in the creation of the Council. The most significant incentive was a growing recognition, during the years following World War II, that rapid population growth in developing countries was likely to become a major deterrent to their progress and development, which were held to be critical conditions for the harmonious world order that Americans sought to achieve.

The concern and contribution of the World Bank in population planning

The World Bank shares the widespread conviction that high population growth rates present a long-term threat to world viability and interfere with present efforts to improve standards of living. In trying to do something about the problem the Bank is moving on three fronts: increasing world awareness of the problems created by surging population growth; focusing the attention of national leaders on the demographic situation of their countries; assisting countries which want Bank assistance in building institutions and programs that will enable them to influence the growth of their populations.

Family planning and fertility decline in Korea: retrospect and prospect

The decline in total fertility in Korea from 6.3 children per woman in 1960–1961 to 4.5 in 1970–1971 is attributable, among other factors, to the family planning program. Strikingly, fertility has declined most rapidly in the rural areas where the family planning program was particularly strong. Total fertility, however, has not declined since 1967–1968, generally because budgetary problems for the family planning program have been severe. The present annual population growth rate is 2.2 per cent and the prospects are bleak that a 1.5 per cent growth rate will be achieved in 1976, a goal made explicit in the government's Third Five-Year Plan. Government planning has not sufficiently recognized that even if age-specific fertility continues to decline, a changing age structure will increase the national growth rate to 1.8 or 1.9 per cent by 1981. The authors reconsider the stated national goal of a 1.5 per cent growth in 1976, concluding that it can only be achieved with increased government commitment to family planning, higher targets, incorporation of abortion into the program, and a great increase in the number of sterilizations.

United States Agency for International Development (USAID) contributions to international population programs

Since its inception in 1965, and especially since passage of the Title X Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act in 1968, the population program of the United States Agency for International Development (AID) has grown rapidly to become the principal source of assistance to population and family planning programs in developing countries. At the current annual level of $125 million, AID provides more than 60 per cent of the resources available for international population program assistance. AID obligations for this program now total more than $0.5 billion. This paper describes the allocation of these resources by six functional categories: (a) demographic and social data, (b) population policy, (c) fertility control research, (d) family planning services, (e) information, education, and communication systems, and (f) manpower and supportive institutions. Noteworthy projects in each category are discussed. With continued strong support from the United States and increasing contributions from other countries, it should be possible for the world community to make great strides toward making family planning information, and the most effective and acceptable means of fertility control fully available to all persons of reproductive age in the developing world during the current decade.