The need to distinguish demands for health care from need

The demand for care is the recognition by people of their desire for care—what people might be willing to pay for in a market, or might wish to use in a system of free health care which had no restraints on resources. Demand is influenced by the current prevailing culture, and by information available to potential patients through many channels—friends and relatives, the media, and doctors. An example of demand might be for electrical stimulation of the facial muscles after Bell’s palsy, not of proved efficacy. The need for care is the call for medical interventions for deficiencies in health determined by health professionals, because they recognise an individual patient’s or a population’s ability to benefit.1 With regard to rights to care, King has written:

 “By adding “rights” to “wants” and “needs”, we make a difficult pair into an even more difficult trio. The right to personal health care can be considered as a group of interventions that an individual will only sometimes need, may not always want, which are not to be imposed upon him, but which must be available.”2

 The “right” to care will vary in different societies but many would agree that it is more appropriate for developing countries to provide efficient and effective prevention and treatment of common infectious illnesses, and efficient and effective maternal and child health services, rather than “high tech” hospitals in a …