Health for all by 2000 AD: the role of Ayurveda.

It is difficult to provide comprehensive primary health care to entire populations in developing countries like India where 80% of the population lives in rural areas. People continue however to contract diseases and die despite advances in science medicine and technology. Many people who live in villages could enjoy better health status if they were informed about the unsanitary nature of their living conditions and taught how to practice preventive and promotive health care. One of the most certain and feasible ways to reach the entire world population with education about the importance of basic preventive and promotive health care and how to secure it is to enlist the support and help of traditional medicine and its practitioners in cultures worldwide. In so doing primary health care will become a mass grassroots movement. The World Health Organization has acknowledged the need to involve traditional medicine in its drive to secure Health for All by 2000. Health for all demands focus upon health at the local level rooted in the natural and cultural environments of populations concerned. The authors describe Ayurveda the traditional system of medicine in India and how it emphasizes the prevention of disease.