ABSTRACT
Health education has only recently become fully accepted as a special activity requiring specific professional training. As a service it has not received the serious attention it deserves in terms of budgetry and staff allocations. Until the 1970s a western model of health education relying mainly on print media was being applied in a context where the majority of the people was illiterate.
A variety of programmes have since been developed involving alternative ways of communicating health information which focus on health behaviour and which pay particular attention to the cultural background of the population. A wide range of strategies and their evaluations are described.
