Essential health care requires essential health technology, a technology which people can understand and which the non-expert can apply. The identification or generation of such technology forms part of the revolution in community health and thus presents a tremendous challenge to [W.H.O.].
We just cannot afford to continue the indiscriminate use of methods, machines and medicines, so many of which have never undergone the critical evaluation of a controlled trial, let alone a proper cost/effectiveness analysis. . . . We must break the chains of dependence on unproved, oversophisticated and overcostly health technology by developing another kind of technology that is more appropriate because it is technically sound, culturally acceptable and financially feasible.