Abstract: Relationships between population movements and health are recognised in the literature of the social and the biomedical sciences. These relationships are manifest in the following examples. a) The effects of movements on the transmission of disease and their impacts on programmes for disease control, both of which may be illustrated in historical and contemporary experience. The former are exemplified in the sleeping sickness epidemics of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly in east and central Africa - people moved, settlements were deserted, population was redistributed and new ecological conditions and patterns of population/land relationships emerged (Ford 1971). The latter are exemplified in attempts to achieve malaria control, with limited success among rural populations, particularly in savanna areas of Africa (Moluneaux and Guamiccia 1980), in the more successful major onchocerciasis control programme in the Volta River headwaters and adjacent parts of West Africa during the last two decades (Remme and Zonzo 1989), and in studies of the as yet only partially understood spread of AIDS. b) The effects of movements on the physical and mental conditions of those who move. These effects are especially relevant in the rural-urban movements which are common throughout Africa. Physical stress is caused, for example, by changes in patterns of food consumption with resultant undernutrition and malnutrition (especially if the transition to urban life is accompanied by under-and un-employment and deprivation). Mental stress is caused by exchanging close and intense personal contacts in rural life for the relative anonymity of urban life with deprivation of such contacts. The impact of both these sets of stresses is mitigated by the maintenance of urban-rural contacts and by the development of urban support systenis which have rural origins. c) The effects of movements on the need for, the nature of and the provision of health services - in both rural and urban areas: with the relative neglect of the former and emphasis on the latter. There are also the particular needs of traditionally mobile rural people such as nomadic pastoralists