At the turn of the new century, the United Nations set a series of global health goals to be achieved by 2015. Amongst the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), goal six aimed to combat HIV, malaria and other diseases. Whilst progress has been made towards addressing MDG 6, improvement has been slower than anticipated and both communicable and non-communicable diseases have risen to prominence in the minds of health planners in the last few years. In recent times, attention has been focused on addressing non-communicable diseases, as statistics indicate they are the major threats to health.The greatest advances in the health of people have come from equitable access to basic essential resources such as clean air, soil and housing, clean water and nutritious food.