Awakening Hippocrates: A Primer on Health, Poverty, and Global Service
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\ Reviewer: Ralph D. Arcari, Ph.D.(University of Connecticut Health Center)\ Description: The first of this book's two parts delineates the socioeconomic basis for less than subsistence income in third world countries. The second part consists of biographical summaries of high profile or well-regarded healthcare providers to the impoverished. A causal relationship between life-threatening chronic illness for half of this planet's human population and income level is the premise upon which this work is predicated. \ Purpose: "As constructed, this book thus serves as an introduction to the world of poverty and health in the hope that readers will be motivated to serve," according to the author. The altruism associated with the author's purpose is of the highest order. Social justice necessitates a more equitable distribution of health resources, pharmaceutical, clinical, and human. How the current unacceptable conditions developed is outlined in compelling detail. Whether this book will catalyze change is a matter of judgment.\ Audience: "Although targeted at health care providers, [the book] is by no means restricted to them," according to the preface. As a physician, the author has had extensive clinical experience in medically destitute areas and has established an organization to serve the health needs of those unfortunate to live in these regions, called Omni Med.\ Features: The book, is, as its subtitle indicates, a "primer" on the relationship between disease and capitalism, international aid organizations, geopolitical dynamics, and historical precedents. This work's nonacademic language and straightforward style are among its assets along with the extensive documentation and references to appropriate Internet sources. There are, however, no photographic illustrations of third world poverty. There are also no statistical graphics comparing have and have-not populations.\ Assessment: There are few recently published books that provide an overview of health in developing countries in writing as accessible as in this one. This work is intended to complement a another AMA title by the same author, A Practical Guide to International Health Service. Together, these two books will serve to explain why healthcare is so deficient in most of the world and to direct one to those organizations attempting to address this issue.\ \
