ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to assess the effects of US health care projects in an area of the Third World where US interests have a considerable stake in supporting many of the basic causes of disease and malnutrition. The plantations and large farms are all owned by Colombians, but US and World Hank loans have provided much of the capital. The community whose malnutrition provides Community Systems Foundation with its grant lies in semitropical rural area of Villa Rica on the southern rim of Cauca Valley. Traditional-style peasant farming in this area is some six times more efficient than that of the sugar plantations, in terms of the energy yielded in food, compared with the energy input required to produce that food. The Rockefeller Foundation entered Colombia as early as 1913 with its hookworm eradication program. Collaboration of local professionals is essential to aim of elite-training, and without the active support of host governments the foreign projects would be seriously handicapped.
