THEAPARTHEIDERA
the industrialized countries-including
the highest rate of coronary heart
disease in the world-and
they enjoyed some of the highest standards of
health care in the world. Ninety-eight percent of the medical budget was
spent on curative rather than preventive services, and most of it.was con-
sumed by white patients. Doctor Christiaan
Barnard performed the
world's first heart transplant operation at Groot Schuur Hospital in Cape
Town in 1968, and there were many transplants in later years, almost
exclusively for white recipients. Medical education concentrated on the
problems of the white population. The vast majority of doctors were white,
and the medical schools were not substantially changing the balance. At
the end of 198o, 657 white, 52 African, 62 Indian, and 18 Coloured
medical students qualified as doctors.V
The government did not keep detailed medical statistics for Africans. In
urban areas, black infant mortality rates and life expectancies improved
substantially during the I960s and I970s, but there was no discernible
improvement in the Homelands. The officialestimate of the African infant
mortality rate in South Africa as a 'whole in 1974 was 100 to
I 10 per
1,000, which was worse than every country in Africa except Upper Volta