ABSTRACT
As a corollary to this analysis of the political economy of primary health care it follows that the extent of implementation of this approach in different countries is different. The political leadership and health administrators in Third World countries sought an aura of social legitimacy for their lopsided health services development by getting ill-defined or often not very relevant social, cultural, and psychological issues raised by social scientists and health educators. It is obvious that the inroads made by the colonial approach associated with western medicine continue to influence health services systems in Third World countries to this day. An extreme but also very alarming facet of such political subversion of medical knowledge can be found in the creation of the idea that severe undernutrition in early life causes permanent mental retardation due to brain damage. This subversion of knowledge forms one of the many political issues related to health and health services.
