Feasibility of a national health service in Malta

Abstract

The W.H.O. definition of health is a "state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity". In keeping with this is the comprehensive definition of public health by Winslow (1951), which states that the provision of health is the science and art of "...the development of the social machinery which will ensure to every individual in the community a standard of living adequate for the maintenance of health". Health services are only one aspect of the complex matrix of a society. By and large, they take their shape from that society. The determinants of health services and their planning may be classified as political, historical, cultural, economic, demographic and epidemiological scientific and technological [...].