ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews urban health care policies in the context of the overall urban environment with its specific disease problems and the child care difficulties of working parents. It argues that reproducing western-type medical systems in the urban areas of the developing world is inappropriate both because it may lead to the neglect of environmental improvement and because it gives no scope for community participation. The heavy build-up of a susceptible population with poor hygiene and a contaminated environment has largely been responsible for the recent cholera epidemics that swept through parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America. As a result, cholera has become endemic in some countries like the Philippines, Bangladesh, India and Indonesia. Metropolitan water development projects are mainly responsive to the needs of the modern urban and commercial sectors and millions of families in the squatter areas are left to buy water by the tin or pail at several times the price paid by the rich.
