Ethnic health project 1979/1980.

ANY Asian and Afro-Caribbean immigrants are thought to present special problems in medicine and the medical world frequently defines these as being different from the indigenous population. It has been suggested’ that immigrants may have unusual inherited defects or illnesses acquired in a previous environment or illnesses which result from a hange to a new environment. In the past it has been ought that health propaganda or health information ight be a useful weapon in helping fight some of these illnessesz, for example reducing the number of Asian children suffering from rickets by encouraging their mothers to feed them extra vitamin D or by reducing the number of Afro-Caribbean children suffering from sickle-cell anaemia by encouraging would-be parents to undertake genetic counselling. Increasingly education is now thought3 to be a more able ally for, unlike information or propaganda, education is person centred and is concerned with the development and growth of the individual. However two major problems exist.