AFRO-NETS> Primary Mother Care (subtitled Primary Disentrapment) is on the web.

["Maurice King" <M.H.King@leeds.ac.uk>]

Primary Mother Care (subtitled Primary Disentrapment) is on the web. 
--------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Readers,

Primary Mother Care is now on the web at 
http://www.Leeds.ac.uk/demographic.disentrapment - 
after a gestation of 20 years! Hugh Philpott started it as a compan-
ion to Primary Child Care  (now having a second edition by WHO incor-
porating IMCI). Then for many years Primary Mother Care was part of 
GTZ's Primary Surgery program. However it is now considered too con-
troversial for GTZ and has recently been axed. It is therefore on its 
own.

Its primary target is the paramedical workers of Africa, particularly 
the pupil midwives, but it should interest anyone concerned with the 
health of the developing world. It is in 'easy English' with a com-
plete technical vocabulary.

It describes normal and abnormal deliveries in detail, and all the 
family planning methods, including the natural and the post coital 
ones. There are chapters on antenatal care, the new-born, the puer-
perium, breast feeding and women's diseases, etc.

Chapter Two: ' How many children?' lifts the Hardinian taboo on demo-
graphic entrapment using Malawi as an example. It calculates that 2 
child families could disentrap Malawi - the present average family is 
5.6. This chapter caused much argument when circulated in South Af-
rica in draft. These arguments have been summarized in Section 2.16 
Defusing dynamite. Demographic entrapment appears to be by  far the 
most serious public health problem in Africa - surpassing even AIDS. 
Africa's most eminent demographer, Jack Caldwell, will say  (pri-
vately) that much of Africa is trapped. Primary Mother Care grapples 
with this and is therefore subtitled Primary disentrapment. Meanwhile 
entrapment is tightly taboo to demographers, development economists, 
and the UN agencies - all of which must therefore be considered in-
tellectually corrupt.

If the South has to reduce its fertility, the North has to modify its 
lifestyle - which indeed it should! Chapter Two deals with this vig-
orously - insofar as space will allow it.

Primary Mother Care breaks with convention in other ways also. It is 
large 382 pages, 408,000 words, 633 illustrations. If it is not to 
look too massive, its print has to be small - 9 point. There are how-
ever many slogans in large type. I argue that it something catches 
the eyes of the readers, they will read it, and that one substantial 
book is better than many little ones, even if the print is rather 
small. It is often argued that books for health workers should be 
small (the 'little books for little people argument). I and some no-
table colleagues argue that the necessary content has to go in with 
the necessary detail - Primary Mother Care has it!

I am looking for a publisher, and a subsidy to make it cheap. It has 
been typeset camera-ready in WordPerfect so that it can be readily 
adapted and updated.

It is already on the disentrapment website above as PDF (Adobe Acro-
bat) files. If you would like a couple of CDROMs with versions in 
WordPerfect and in PDF, and all the illustrations as PSD  (Adobe Ac-
robat) files send me an email with your address.

The tidy page layout in WordPerfect is specific to the printer that 
is used. I use an HP DeskJet 820 Cxi. Any other printer will alter 
the page layout, and cause it to change - the figures will  move 
about. Correcting this needs patience.

We are still in the process of making small changes, and would wel-
come any suggestions and particularly to be informed of any 'bugs'.

If entrapment is as grave as Jack Caldwell thinks - and he is proba-
bly right - and demography, development economics and the UN agencies 
are as intellectually corrupt as they most certainly are, this is an 
epochal book. It won't lift the Hardinian taboo - but it will give it 
a jolly good kick.

We humans taboo our population problems - the Hardinian taboo. That 
taboo must lift if increasing starvation and violence are to be pre-
vented. It has been argued that entrapment is  'racist'. I argue that 
to taboo it is even more 'racist' in that allows trapped communities 
to proceed to starvation and violence with their dilemmas undiscussed 
- and without the critical assistance being provided to them. Somehow 
the racist demon (Demon 23) has to be exorcized (laid to rest by rea-
son). Chapter Two begins to do this.

Very best wishes to you all. I do hope that Primary Mother Care is 
useful both to mothers and especially to their (trapped) communities. 
I look forward to being back in Africa (Ghana) in a few days time.

"Maurice King" 
mailto:M.H.King@leeds.ac.uk 


--
Send mail for the `AFRO-NETS' conference to `<afro-nets@usa.healthnet.org>'.
Mail administrative requests to `<majordomo@usa.healthnet.org>'.
For additional assistance, send mail to:  `<owner-afro-nets@usa.healthnet.org>'.