Curative medicine must be seen as a means of involving people in prevention. Prevention is aided by caring and curing which are the processes by which prevention is initiated. This paper, based on a study in a village in Ferozepur district of southern Punjab, shows the necessity in rural preventive health care of focusing on young mothers and on households in which they live. Constant visiting of individual homes was found to be important even when no treatment was required if only to assure the daughter-in-law that one was willing to be a part of her world and a friend if she wished it so. Once the young women had the confidence, faith and trust to listen, further steps beyond caring were removing dependency and, beyond that still, trying to interest them in each others problems, eventually to reach a stage where they are not afraid to demonstrate that interest.
