Desarrollo Económico, ambiente y efectos en la salud

Abstract

It has been a traditional concept that the economic development is accompanied by an improvement in the population’s welfare, life quality and health status. Unfortunately it is not always like this. The national gross product and per capita income are statistical average indicators that too often hide significant social inequalities. The decrease in the Chilean child mortality rate in the last ten years shows evident inequalities of that kind. This paper reviews the relationships between a population’s health status and its environment, emphasizing their importance, and specially man’s interventions, under the form of environmental alterations that create such conditions that improve or impair a community’s health status. Many of these alterations are direct outcomes of the so-called “development”.