ABSTRACT
India has made considerable progress in improving the health and welfare of many of its citizens, but the country still faces major public health challenges. These challenges range from undernutrition and infectious disease to chronic diseases associated with aging, and from environmental and occupational health problems to afflictions of modernization associated with tobacco consumption, changes in diet, and new sources of stress. Today, India is experiencing an increase in chronic disease among the better-off coupled with a continued high prevalence of infectious disease among the impoverished.1 Many scholars credit this health transition to an interplay of modernizing social forces and medical interventions. This argument is based on the premise that, as a result of modernization, Western allopathic medicine is increasingly accessible to people in the developing world, that it is efficacious in these settings, and that people make use of health resources in ways that result in prolonged life and improved health.2
