Health in need is health indeed
THE old man carrying his two-year old kid travelled all the way from his city, locating and searching healthcare centres and specialists who could treat his child.
The delay in initiation of treatment increases the tension, agony and stress of parents. The family on the other side is in quos and waiting with painful eyes.
A middle aged young male with his family sitting outside the corridor of a private sector OPD after getting the consultation of his few months old child was, with deep thoughts, calculating the transport fare that he yet has to travel to reach back home, the food and especially the medicine he has to purchase for his child.
The satisfaction level he gained here; would never be achievable at the public sector hospital. The dynamics of consultations changed when a health care professional does practice in a private clinic.
Heavy expenses act as a great economical and psychological stress over low socioeconomic and middle class population.
In radius of a few miles from major cities of Pakistan, we could only see an under-developing healthcare delivery and services, trust on public health services is struggling and at the same time on the other hand the seriousness of community is alarming; community participation, contribution in healthcare activities, keeping their environment clean and promoting health culture by disseminating the right info.
Community also owes to hold their responsibility to screen the uncertified and non-qualified health professionals from their areas despite they encourage them; by appreciating utilization of services they are providing.
These are merely centres for spreading of complications and resistance development centres and making people’s life worse by giving cheap but wrong treatments.
Till now we are still struggling very hard to develop a referral system for all kinds of cases. The reason amongst most of the referrals is non-availability of specialized staff and equipment.
The sustainable, efficient, effective, economical and readily available health services are important but more attention towards the right information to the community is very crucial. The grassroots level intervention on a continuous basis is needed with implementation of basic principles of social and behavioural change.
The basic information of any ailment, illness and diseases is very important at a very early stage so the early preventive measures must be taken and the compliance must be ensured. A half information and only emphasis on the creative pattern of treatment without counselling to patients is leaving behind a number of questions with gaps that lead to complications of ailments or diseases at later stages.
Most of the community at their early stages of life, especially at their school age which is very receptive, absorptive and further it’s assumed to have better attitude for healthy behaviour.
For non-communicable diseases the age, height, genetic pattern, race and ethnicity are non-modifiable factors what we can change is hypertension, raised glucose, physical inactivity, overweight, obesity and lipids.
For all these lifestyle modification, diet, sleep pattern, stress, water intake and daily exercise is necessary.
Similarly for prevention of communicable diseases, (1) Handle & Prepare Food Safely, (2) Wash Hands Often (3) Clean & Disinfect Commonly Used Surfaces (4) Cough and Sneeze into a Tissue or Your Sleeve (5) Don’t Share Personal Items (6) Get Vaccinated (7) Avoid Touching Wild Animals (8) Stay Home When Sick. A communicable disease is any disease that passes between people or animals. People sometimes refer to communicable diseases as “infectious” or “transmissible” diseases.
Pathogens, including bacteria, viruses, fungi and protists, cause communicable diseases. A person may develop a communicable disease after becoming infected by the pathogen.
This may happen through: Direct contact with a person carrying the pathogen, contact with contaminated fluids, such as blood, mucus, or saliva, inhaling contaminated droplets from another person’s cough or sneeze, receiving a bite from an animal or insect carrying the pathogen, consuming contaminated water or food.
Once a pathogen has entered a person’s body, it will begin replicating. The individual may then begin to experience symptoms.
Some symptoms are a direct result of the pathogen damaging the body’s cells. Others are due to the body’s immune response to the infection. Communicable diseases are usually mild, and symptoms pass after a few days.
However, some can be serious and potentially life threatening. So, in order to reduce disability adjusted life years and to improve quality adjusted life years appropriate and basic information required to maintain a healthy life. So Health in need is health indeed.
—The writer is contributing columnist, based in Rawalpindi.
