Dr. Abraham Flexner more than 100 years ago, stated that black medical schools should restrict their efforts to training “Negro sanitarians” rather than surgeons, because blacks were a source of infection and contagion which presented a threat to whites.
As a result, the production of a sufficient number of black doctors to treat the health problems of a growing black population was perpetually crippled, thus adding to the slave health deficit, which Byrd and Clayton maintain has left African Americans in a continually negative health situation compared to whites. Accordingly, the number of black doctors in this country has never been above 5 % of the total number of American physicians, which is out of proportion with the total black population of 12 percent.
To complicate the problem of inadequate health care delivery for blacks, many white doctors refused to care for these patients. Black babies were delivered at home by midwives rather than by physicians, who were not available, and in any case, hospitals would not admit black patients.
With this type of background, it is no wonder that African Americans