Whereas many of the challenges facing the developing world are quite specific to individual countries, others are common to all. The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared that the protection and promotion of its citizens' health is one of the most important functions of government. After all, without a healthy population, any country's hopes for economic prosperity and productivity, social justice, and education are quickly diminished.

Classifying problems in such a dichotomous fashion, of course, may be overstating the case. Even a problem common throughout the entire developing world is bound to have a strong local component. The very differences in culture, religion, resources, and social fabric mentioned previously mandate it. Directing attention to the variety of medical establishments already in place in different regions of the developing world gives a sense of the complexity of forces that can be expected to influence their further development. The determinative social textures existing in such geographically diverse locations as Asia, South America, and Africa are in a constant state of flux, and changes are likely to be driven by a complex interaction of factors including economics, cultural particularities, issues of the environment, changes in governmental structure, national priority shifts, availability and distribution of resources, and critical regional issues. Clearly, an in-depth understanding of these local factors is required before any assessment or change to an institution of health care can be properly made.

However, several themes central to the issue of effecting change in the health of developing countries may provide at least a cursory understanding and appreciation of the current state of affairs. First and foremost, medical education should be thought of as the base of health care, and any assessment will be incomplete without considering the role played by institutions that train future health care personnel. It also goes without saying that looking at systems of health care delivery is of utmost importance to the goal of understanding the situations of developing countries. Both of these issues, however, must be examined in light of the diversity that so much of this introduction has emphasized. In searching for universal recommendations, it must be kept in mind that a course of action that provides the perfect solution to the problems in one region of the world may be entirely unfeasible in another. As such, any global recommendations must transcend the cultural, social, religious, and economic boundaries presented throughout the developing world. . .