ABSTRACT
The design purpose of the Mali Rural Health Project (PSR) was to test the feasibility and replicability of a low–cost model for improving health status in rural areas of one of the world’s poorest countries by promoting improved sanitation and childcare, and providing curative health services for a few simple disorders. In retrospect, it is difficult to see how village health worker activity resulting from the project might have brought about a significant improvement in health status. The PSR generated much useful information about obstacles to improved rural health care and ways and means of communicating rudimentary skills to village health workers – information that the preceding chapters have sought to place in the public domain. The PSR demonstrates the non–feasibility per se of state-aided rural primary health care in Mali. The pedagogical technique, the project has demonstrates the usefulness of role–playing, stories, and pictures, while pointing to pitfalls that should be avoids with each of these approaches.
