Closing remarks
We have all learned much during these two days, as we have been taking a broader view of the complex interplay of health and economics and development in the rural populations of the world. We are now better able to appreciate the need for an informed multi-disciplinary approach to the multifactorial basis of ill-health and poverty. Just as friction generates heat, and the rubbing together of rough ferrous surfaces produces sparks, so we have seen here a display of multi-professional sparks that should ignite policies and people. And remember Augustine’s phrase. ‘One loving spirit sets another on fire’. We have seen the urgent need to work together if these intractable problems are to be solved. This cooperation will embrace the World Bank and governments; governments and voluntary agencies; international organizations with their flexibility and initiative, and executive bodies like ministries of health; the technical and the cultural; the indigenous and the imported.