Educating Doctors About Health Promotion and Preventive Care

Leon Piterman

“The medical profession is perhaps best known for its contribution to curative medicine. Each day we read about advances in medical science driven by groundbreaking research aimed at curing diseases. In the developing world infectious diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, schistosomiasis and the widespread prevalence of HIV and AIDS provide enormous challenges for medical researchers and clinicians. In the developed world chronic and complex disease such as diabetes and ischaemic heart disease and cancer are the commonest causes of morbidity and mortality with mental illness continuing to escalate in both the developed and the developing world as a major cause of disability …”