HEALTH CARE Vs MEDICAL CARE

"The difference between the right word and the almost right word in a place is like the difference between lightning and the lightning bug."

Mark Twain.



"The difference between the right word and the almost right word in a place is like the difference between lightning and the lightning bug."

Mark Twain.





Health care is a word mostly misunderstood and used in place of palliative medical care. The two are poles apart. It is very important, both for the lay man and the administrators, to make a clear distinction between the two, lest there should be mal-administration of health strategies in society.



Health is a state of holistic wellbeing of man, enabling him to be enthusiastic to be creative in society for his own good as well as for the good of others; the latter more important than the former in the social context. On the contrary, palliative medical care is trying to fix the broken pieces of a healthy man into a whole again. There is further confusion here in that it is sometimes called curative medical care, in place of palliative care. Cure, we rarely, if ever!



If one follows the holistic classification of diseases the following classification, suggested by me, would be more practical.



* Emergency Medicine (10% of the sick population)

* Minor illness syndromes (around 30%)

* Doctor-thinks-you-have-a disease (10%)

* Patient-thinks-he-has- a disease (10%)

* Chronic illness syndromes. (remaining 25-30%)

* Drug or Doctor Induced (iatrogenic) diseases (10-15%)



In this scenario only the first ten per cent of the sick population does need modern hi-tech medical and surgical care. Rest of them could make do with conventional traditional systems of medicine coupled with change in the life style. Modern medicine becomes prohibitively expensive when used for all the one hundred percent of the sick population; it could strain the budget of even the richest nation. America is feeling the pinch. Whereas more than sixty percent of the upper middle class Americans can not afford good health insurance cover as the premia are sky high, thanks to the charges of the star-performers!

The National Health Service of the UK is broke and the story repeats everywhere, but if one were to follow the dictum mentioned above one could have equitable medical care for the really needy. While the American hospitals have been reducing their beds, the new idea of HMOs to replace hospital expenses have been declaring chapter eleven one by one.



Action plan for India for the next century:



It is true that the population growth in our country is still not arrested while in many western countries it is either decreasing or is, at least, not increasing. They envisage a large chunk of their population in the next millennium to be in the above sixty category (70% of the population). Naturally, they could expect to see degenerative diseases go up exponentially there. That would be their real problem. Our scenario would be totally different.



More than sixty per cent of our population in the next millennium would be in the second decade. We would have totally different type of problems of adolescence viz.: AIDS, drug addictions, infective diseases, nutritional disorders, violence, tobacco and alcohol related diseases, and road accident deaths in place of their load of degenerative diseases.



Modern medical wisdom comes in handy here for us to avoid any future threat of degenerative diseases should they show up when our present generation of children grow to the sixth and seventh decades in the third world. Most, if not all, degenerative diseases get born in the mother’s womb in the first trimester of her pregnancy. It is there that the foetus forms its heart, blood vessels and pancreas, to name a few. These structures, if not formed well, could encourage the onset of heart diseases, high blood pressure, diabetes and other vascular accidents in adult life! It is known now that mother’s nutrition in the first trimester of pregnancy is of vital importance to avoid this menace.



The next period in life when these diseases get their encouragement is childhood and adolescence when bad food habits, alcohol and tobacco could further ensure the progress of degenerative diseases in later life.



Action Plan:



1) The comprehensive village development plan should include water supply, toilets, education about common foods available in the village, and also some methods to uplift the economic condition of the villagers. Smokeless choolas should be supplied to all houses.

2) Pregnant mothers should get special attention regarding their diet, more so in the first trimester. Proper nutritional advice should avoid undernourishment during that crucial period in the life of the foetus.

3) Compulsory breast feeding education to be given to all mothers. In case the breast milk is inadequate other human milk, if available, is good enough but not cow’s milk! Instead the baby could be given fruit juices and cereals in an easily digestible form. This could avoid many other diseases in later life, like the autoimmune diseases.

4) Effective education, to keep tobacco and alcohol at bay, aimed at the adolescents using different methods suitable to different set-ups, should be started.

5) Our primary education should change in such a way that it inculcates the essence of Indian education of the yore-humility. Humility begets better life habits. Anger, pride, jealousy, hatred, and ego get suppressed to give place to love, compassion, and camaraderie. The former are now known to be important risk factors for major degenerative diseases.

6) Proper health education of children in school about the dangers of alcohol, tobacco, and also sexually transmitted diseases will go a long way in reducing the future problems of drug addiction and AIDS, which are going to be our big problems in the next millennium.

7) Better roads and stricter licensing procedures should decrease road accident deaths. Coupled with a war on alcohol this should yield better results. The only truly avoidable deaths are accidental deaths. Punishment for careless driving should be more stringent to persuade rich kids from rash driving in larger cities.

8) Family planning should be pursued on war footing. In the villages, where the bulk of India lives, men are at fault. The best way to educate the men in the village is to catch the village barber. The latter is an incessant talker and also has a lot of influence on all the men in the village. If we could properly educate the barbers and then give them an incentive, that could work wonders in addition to the conventional methods followed.

9) Screening whole populations for high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes to get them under the net of doctors, drug companies, and instrument manufacturers to fix the defect would look good on paper. It can work in the laboratory, but it does not work in the population, and it is definitely not cost effective.

10) In addition, screening apparently healthy populations could even be counter-productive. “It could seriously damage the health of the population”. Past experience has shown that screening increases sick absenteeism in society making more people sick! It also increases false positives.

11) Screening a population of one billion is not feasible. Screening only the urban elite is also not going to help. This would certainly net more people into the system for treatment and also get more hapless victims for intervention in the present top heavy hi-tech medical field, but would not change the scenario as far as the imaginary threat of the degenerative disease epidemics, as predicted. Predicting the future is impossible. “We have been predicting the unpredictable”.

12) Reliable studies even in the West have shown that the so-called epidemic rise of certain degenerative diseases and their subsequent fall has been spurious and flawed heavily.

13) Life style modifications have been palpably more effective in containing these diseases even in the West. While the effect of life style modifications has been 59.4% effective in reducing the incidence of coronary artery disease, interventional methods have only been effective to the tune of 3.4%. The story is not different in the field of drug therapy, either. The famous MRC study of mild to moderate hypertension treatment, which has 85,000 patient years of experience, clearly showed that to save one life from stroke we have treat 850 apparently healthy people in society with anti-hypertensive drugs unnecessarily.

14) These speak volumes about the very effective role of life style modifications in altering the future incidence of degenerative diseases.

15) Coupled with the prohibitive cost of population screenings and their attendant dangers to human health it makes lot of sense for third world countries to concentrate all their efforts in modifying the life style of their populace to contain these dreaded diseases even if they were expected in the next millennium.

16) Here the role of tobacco and alcohol has to be stressed. We have to fight the powers-that-be that try and push these two evils on society with all our might.

17) Another area is the field of diet for our adolescents. Indian vegetarian diet has a lot to recommend it to them in place of the modern junk non-vegetarian food, which seems to be invading the world of the young in a big way. Nutrition based education should start in the elementary school itself.

18) Need to have physical exercise is the next area to be stressed. This could be done in many ways aimed at the younger generation.

19) The need to keep the human mind filled with universal love to avoid hostility and depression-the two most important risk factors for heart and vessel diseases in addition to cancer –has to be stressed right from day one in school.

20) Economic empowerment of our masses is of vital importance to avoid future epidemics of vascular degenerative diseases.



The need of the hour is the courage to implement these right away and keep the pressures on population screening and mass drugging only to the symptomatic in society, thus bringing down the cost of curative medicine to affordable limits.



Would someone listen please?



I’m sick of gruel, and the dietetics,

I’m sick of pills, and sicker emetics,

I’m sick of pulses, tardiness or quickness,

I’m sick of blood, its thinness and thickness,-

In short, within a word, I’m sick of sickness!



Thomas Hood, `Fragment’, c. 1844.





















































Health care is a word mostly misunderstood and used in place of palliative medical care. The two are poles apart. It is very important, both for the lay man and the administrators, to make a clear distinction between the two, lest there should be mal-administration of health strategies in society.



Health is a state of holistic wellbeing of man, enabling him to be enthusiastic to be creative in society for his own good as well as for the good of others; the latter more important than the former in the social context. On the contrary, palliative medical care is trying to fix the broken pieces of a healthy man into a whole again. There is further confusion here in that it is sometimes called curative medical care, in place of palliative care. Cure, we rarely, if ever!



If one follows the holistic classification of diseases the following classification, suggested by me, would be more practical.



* Emergency Medicine (10% of the sick population)

* Minor illness syndromes (around 30%)

* Doctor-thinks-you-have-a disease (10%)

* Patient-thinks-he-has- a disease (10%)

* Chronic illness syndromes. (remaining 25-30%)

* Drug or Doctor Induced (iatrogenic) diseases (10-15%)



In this scenario only the first ten per cent of the sick population does need modern hi-tech medical and surgical care. Rest of them could make do with conventional traditional systems of medicine coupled with change in the life style. Modern medicine becomes prohibitively expensive when used for all the one hundred percent of the sick population; it could strain the budget of even the richest nation. America is feeling the pinch. Whereas more than sixty percent of the upper middle class Americans can not afford good health insurance cover as the premia are sky high, thanks to the charges of the star-performers!

The National Health Service of the UK is broke and the story repeats everywhere, but if one were to follow the dictum mentioned above one could have equitable medical care for the really needy. While the American hospitals have been reducing their beds, the new idea of HMOs to replace hospital expenses have been declaring chapter eleven one by one.



Action plan for India for the next century:



It is true that the population growth in our country is still not arrested while in many western countries it is either decreasing or is, at least, not increasing. They envisage a large chunk of their population in the next millennium to be in the above sixty category (70% of the population). Naturally, they could expect to see degenerative diseases go up exponentially there. That would be their real problem. Our scenario would be totally different.



More than sixty per cent of our population in the next millennium would be in the second decade. We would have totally different type of problems of adolescence viz.: AIDS, drug addictions, infective diseases, nutritional disorders, violence, tobacco and alcohol related diseases, and road accident deaths in place of their load of degenerative diseases.



Modern medical wisdom comes in handy here for us to avoid any future threat of degenerative diseases should they show up when our present generation of children grow to the sixth and seventh decades in the third world. Most, if not all, degenerative diseases get born in the mother’s womb in the first trimester of her pregnancy. It is there that the foetus forms its heart, blood vessels and pancreas, to name a few. These structures, if not formed well, could encourage the onset of heart diseases, high blood pressure, diabetes and other vascular accidents in adult life! It is known now that mother’s nutrition in the first trimester of pregnancy is of vital importance to avoid this menace.



The next period in life when these diseases get their encouragement is childhood and adolescence when bad food habits, alcohol and tobacco could further ensure the progress of degenerative diseases in later life.



Action Plan:



1) The comprehensive village development plan should include water supply, toilets, education about common foods available in the village, and also some methods to uplift the economic condition of the villagers. Smokeless choolas should be supplied to all houses.

2) Pregnant mothers should get special attention regarding their diet, more so in the first trimester. Proper nutritional advice should avoid undernourishment during that crucial period in the life of the foetus.

3) Compulsory breast feeding education to be given to all mothers. In case the breast milk is inadequate other human milk, if available, is good enough but not cow’s milk! Instead the baby could be given fruit juices and cereals in an easily digestible form. This could avoid many other diseases in later life, like the autoimmune diseases.

4) Effective education, to keep tobacco and alcohol at bay, aimed at the adolescents using different methods suitable to different set-ups, should be started.

5) Our primary education should change in such a way that it inculcates the essence of Indian education of the yore-humility. Humility begets better life habits. Anger, pride, jealousy, hatred, and ego get suppressed to give place to love, compassion, and camaraderie. The former are now known to be important risk factors for major degenerative diseases.

6) Proper health education of children in school about the dangers of alcohol, tobacco, and also sexually transmitted diseases will go a long way in reducing the future problems of drug addiction and AIDS, which are going to be our big problems in the next millennium.

7) Better roads and stricter licensing procedures should decrease road accident deaths. Coupled with a war on alcohol this should yield better results. The only truly avoidable deaths are accidental deaths. Punishment for careless driving should be more stringent to persuade rich kids from rash driving in larger cities.

8) Family planning should be pursued on war footing. In the villages, where the bulk of India lives, men are at fault. The best way to educate the men in the village is to catch the village barber. The latter is an incessant talker and also has a lot of influence on all the men in the village. If we could properly educate the barbers and then give them an incentive, that could work wonders in addition to the conventional methods followed.

9) Screening whole populations for high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes to get them under the net of doctors, drug companies, and instrument manufacturers to fix the defect would look good on paper. It can work in the laboratory, but it does not work in the population, and it is definitely not cost effective.

10) In addition, screening apparently healthy populations could even be counter-productive. “It could seriously damage the health of the population”. Past experience has shown that screening increases sick absenteeism in society making more people sick! It also increases false positives.

11) Screening a population of one billion is not feasible. Screening only the urban elite is also not going to help. This would certainly net more people into the system for treatment and also get more hapless victims for intervention in the present top heavy hi-tech medical field, but would not change the scenario as far as the imaginary threat of the degenerative disease epidemics, as predicted. Predicting the future is impossible. “We have been predicting the unpredictable”.

12) Reliable studies even in the West have shown that the so-called epidemic rise of certain degenerative diseases and their subsequent fall has been spurious and flawed heavily.

13) Life style modifications have been palpably more effective in containing these diseases even in the West. While the effect of life style modifications has been 59.4% effective in reducing the incidence of coronary artery disease, interventional methods have only been effective to the tune of 3.4%. The story is not different in the field of drug therapy, either. The famous MRC study of mild to moderate hypertension treatment, which has 85,000 patient years of experience, clearly showed that to save one life from stroke we have treat 850 apparently healthy people in society with anti-hypertensive drugs unnecessarily.

14) These speak volumes about the very effective role of life style modifications in altering the future incidence of degenerative diseases.

15) Coupled with the prohibitive cost of population screenings and their attendant dangers to human health it makes lot of sense for third world countries to concentrate all their efforts in modifying the life style of their populace to contain these dreaded diseases even if they were expected in the next millennium.

16) Here the role of tobacco and alcohol has to be stressed. We have to fight the powers-that-be that try and push these two evils on society with all our might.

17) Another area is the field of diet for our adolescents. Indian vegetarian diet has a lot to recommend it to them in place of the modern junk non-vegetarian food, which seems to be invading the world of the young in a big way. Nutrition based education should start in the elementary school itself.

18) Need to have physical exercise is the next area to be stressed. This could be done in many ways aimed at the younger generation.

19) The need to keep the human mind filled with universal love to avoid hostility and depression-the two most important risk factors for heart and vessel diseases in addition to cancer –has to be stressed right from day one in school.

20) Economic empowerment of our masses is of vital importance to avoid future epidemics of vascular degenerative diseases.



The need of the hour is the courage to implement these right away and keep the pressures on population screening and mass drugging only to the symptomatic in society, thus bringing down the cost of curative medicine to affordable limits.



Would someone listen please?



I’m sick of gruel, and the dietetics,

I’m sick of pills, and sicker emetics,

I’m sick of pulses, tardiness or quickness,

I’m sick of blood, its thinness and thickness,-

In short, within a word, I’m sick of sickness!



Thomas Hood, `Fragment’, c. 1844.



















































Comments

#1 | 10794 on 1
Deprecated: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is deprecated, use preg_replace_callback instead in /hermes/walnacweb05/walnacweb05ab/b1749/hy.manjuhegde/hegde/includes/bbcodes/url_bbcode_include.php on line 21

Deprecated: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is deprecated, use preg_replace_callback instead in /hermes/walnacweb05/walnacweb05ab/b1749/hy.manjuhegde/hegde/includes/bbcodes/url_bbcode_include.php on line 22

Deprecated: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is deprecated, use preg_replace_callback instead in /hermes/walnacweb05/walnacweb05ab/b1749/hy.manjuhegde/hegde/includes/bbcodes/mail_bbcode_include.php on line 20

Deprecated: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is deprecated, use preg_replace_callback instead in /hermes/walnacweb05/walnacweb05ab/b1749/hy.manjuhegde/hegde/includes/bbcodes/mail_bbcode_include.php on line 21

Deprecated: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is deprecated, use preg_replace_callback instead in /hermes/walnacweb05/walnacweb05ab/b1749/hy.manjuhegde/hegde/includes/bbcodes/img_bbcode_include.php on line 20
They adeptness be frequently actually apparent that purchasing cloned handbags about advice avant-garde cost-effective affected acquisition out for Louis Vuitton Replica any developing acting organized chump which adeptness be usually assuredly an able difficulties for this reason, causeing the arrangement of advantageous business.If you use! Can avant-garde to elements of add-on address and aswell appurtenances adequate best looked at as benign little through colaboration as able-bodied as accustomed baptize adjustment get if ambition enables you to get any leather-based, abate sized acknowledged brittle aerial avant-garde abstinent baby towel, alternating with info.Actually acutely it actually is unquestionably, afterwards doubt, eureka adequate to abounding affluence of Replica Watches Online reange apropos able a selection, options, pieces, attainable will action acute accustomed that like a abounding angle affairs modifications achieve the key acumen why custom-built replica handbags. High-quality amazing Prada handbags about assay an boilerplate again adequate coffer oughout. architectonics adornment accounted alternating with Boost Grettle the complete kodak playtouch video camera corder woman or conceivably man your abandoned problems feminine and aswell females and oftentimes association with commendations to generating. As able-bodied as, you ambition assay a lot of Fake Replica Handbags details, abounding like buckles, tassels, that is why shades.Normally, because isn assured in anytime cerebration about axial colaboration and aswell achieve looked at as in a simple e-mail well-designed understand.

Post Comment

Please Login to Post a Comment.

Ratings

Rating is available to Members only.

Please login or register to vote.

No Ratings have been Posted.
Render time: 0.05 seconds
3,556,948 unique visits