[Health indexes and "sanimetry": conceptual aspects of recent research on the measurement of a population's state of health (author's transl)].

The major health indexes based on the classical concepts of mortality and morbidity are reviewed while emphasizing their limitations: underestimation of health problems socio-economic impact, inadequacy for the evaluation of certain main objectives of health care delivery systems, purely negative measurement of health. This paper investigates the recent attempts to improve these aspects: extension of the concept of morbidity by the introduction of disability measurements and the development of a "positive health" concept. Finally, a discussion is presented of the major health indexes whose development is based on the use of these concepts and the main conceptual, methodological problems they give rise to.