A household survey of health and illness in rural Bolivia.

Information on the health needs of rural populations is meager in most parts of Latin America. This presents a critical problem for Bolivia, a country actively planning the expansion of medical and preventive health services to rural communities. While the Bolivian Government has established a health information system to report births, deaths, and utilization of medical services, marked underreporting limits this system’s usefulness. Hence, until a more comprehensive information system can be established at the national level, surveys of local populations provide the only available and effective means of gathering community-based health data. As part of a program to expand care services for rural communities, the Government of Bolivia and the United States Agency for International Development have jointly established a demonstration project to deliver lowcost health services to the Montero region of central Bolivia. Basic preventive and medical services are to be provided by locally recruited health “promoters” at the community level, while health workers with more advanced