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Essay on Importance of Global health
Inequalities in health and illness
To what extent do inequalities in health continue to widen in the 21st century
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Global Health Critique Humans rely on each other for survival, whether mentally or physically. When the responsibility of survival relies on other members of the group and their help and not just the individual, all members’ chance of survival are improved (Taflinger, 1996). Therefore, when addressing the idea of improving health on a global level, the need for interconnectedness and reliance on each other cannot be ignored. As Holtz (2017) emphasizes, global health has no geographical or political boundaries and encompasses the health of the entire planet. So, why does global health matter? The health of people in a certain area in the world eventually, in some way whether positive or negative, can affect another area of the world, if not the entire world. This effect may be directly related to health, such as the spreading of disease, …show more content…
For areas in the world, such as Japan, who have some of the best health outcomes in the world (Holtz, 2017), why should they worry about helping other areas in the world that are not as fortunate? Aside from the obvious answers that address morals and values for helping those systems in need, there are still areas in the best healthcare systems that could improve. This improvement could stem from learning from other healthcare systems. An important concept to consider when addressing this issue is the actual definition of health. The World Health Organization (2017) defines health as “ a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” Therefore, when comparing different countries and their outcomes related to mental health, social and political stability, risk factors for specific diseases, and even their contributions to environmental degradation, these “less-fortunate” countries do not seem as unfortunate as initially
While the moral backing for public health in its current state may be sound, what many researchers fail to understand is that the many moral failings of its predecessors that color the legacy of public health internationally and at home. As discussed in the chapter “Colonial Medicine and its Legacies” within the textbook Reimagining Global Health arranged by Paul Farmer, before the conception of global health there was international health which sought to distribute health as a good horizontally across international, political lines. Under the framework of international health, public health workers became agents of a cold war enmeshed in the fiscal, geopolitical, and territorial struggles between two hegemons rather than the holistic value of community health. While international health as a framework has largely been abandoned, much of its rhetoric can be found within our current framework of public health such as the enumeration of certain parts of the world as "1st world", "2nd world",
Wilkinson, R.G. & Marmot, M.G. 2003, Social determinants of health: the solid facts, World Health Organization.
1. It is evident that determinants of health and illness cannot be broken down into a single, universal entity, but rather it involves interconnecting mechanisms all contributing to the overall experience of health. These mechanisms stem from one’s culture, for culture serves the purpose in providing people with meaning and a set of beliefs/values to fall back on. One may argue that the definition of well-being is socially constructed whereby normalcy in health is based on one’s culture, what one culture may consider to be a sickness, other culture’s may view this phenomenon in a completely different light. Features such as history, politics, cultural norms, gender, etc. all contribute to a particular cultural identity and thus contribute to the way’s in which health and disease is viewed among said cultures. Through the exploration of these features, one can understand the significant influence culture then has on medical practice and disease.
The world as a whole faces many different challenges in health and wellness. There are many risk that us as humans face every day and for some of us welcome them in. With the most dangerous of the risk to our health being the choices we make every day, humans could dramatically extend their life with just making smart decisions. Smoking, alcohol, lack of sleep, over eating, over consumption of tea and coffee, eating chocolate, junk food consumption, soft drinks, watching TV, and ignoring pain are the top ten risk factors facing humans as a race, according to ALLTOP10LIST.com. More than 16 million Americans are living with a disease caused by smoking. For every person who dies because of smoking, at least 30 people live with a serious smoking-related
There are many inequities in this global world; should there be such gross inequities in the health of people around the world? We hear words like health gap, health care inequality and sustainability. What can be done to eliminate the health gap, health care inequities and maintain sustainability? The World Health Organization (WHO) and other organizations, private and public are working towards eliminating these disparities. Healthy People 2020 are one such goal that has achieved considerable progress in attaining sustainability in the pursuit of global health goals (Gostin et al., 2013). The health gap can be minimized through health strategies. Among them are essentials for all in this global world; clean air, water, healthy food and adequate housing with hygienic living conditions. Primary, secondary, tertiary prevention and care services should be available to all who seek health care services.
Many factors combine together to affect the health of individuals and communities. Whether people are healthy or not, is determined by their circumstances and environment. To a large extent, factors such as where we live, the state of our environment, genetics, our income and education level, and our relationships with friends and family all have considerable impacts on health, whereas the more commonly considered factors such as access and use of health care services often have less of an impact. The context of people’s lives determines their health, and so blaming individuals for having poor health or crediting them for good health is inappropriate. Individuals are unlikely to be able to directly control many of the determinants of health.
It is important to learn the critical global health concepts. “In order to understand and to help address key global health issues like those noted previously, there are a number of concepts concerning global health with which one must be familiar. Some of the most important include:
“Health problems, issues, and concerns that transcend national boundaries, may be influenced by circumstances or experiences in other countries, and are best addressed by cooperative actions and solutions”(Skolnik p.7) is best defined as global health by the Institute of Medicine. With its primary focus on low and middle-income countries, challenges of international public health continue to change and grow depending on the interest of the membership. In order to participate in cooperative actions and have successful solutions, one must understand the progress made so far, the challenges that remain, and what must be done to address them most effectively. With the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), issues concerning global health were interconnected to the poverty of developed and developing countries, along with several reasoning links. After addressing the challenges of women’s and children’s health, water and development, communicable and non-communicable diseases, health systems and workforces, recommendations for what should be focused on in the next decade are suggested.
The concept of the fundamental causes of disease entails the notion that a relationship exists between death and disease to resource accessibility. This access to resources like information, adequate health care, nutrition, and etc. enables individuals to avoid diseases. Lack of accessibility to these resources, as a result of one’s own socioeconomic status, power, ethnicity, gender, etc, is what increases the risk for multiple diseases and their negative consequences. According to Link and Phelan, fundamental causes of disease can only be eradicated through direct intervention of the social conditions that give rise to them, and not through the intervention of the “individually based-mechanisms,” that link them to that particular disease. An example of this approach could be the establishment of more social equality to allow the prevention of diseases through multiple mechanisms compared to the intervention of an individually based mechanism, like the adoption of vaccination policies to reduce Polio.
London, England. The.. London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine n.d., Session 5: The role of the state. in global health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, England. Ricci J.
After 150 years of public health research and intervention, there are bound to be many lessons to draw upon which can provide the insight to guide public health professionals and institutions as they design and implement specific strategies, policies, and measures to increase global resilience for “complex health emergencies”. Identifying both the modifications to public health systems and looking closely from the history of managing environmental and other threats to the public health sector increases the world’s adaptive capacity to more effectively cope and manage with public health emergencies. Major advances have been made during the past decade in the way the international community responds to challenges of complex emergencies. The public health and clinical response to disease of acute epidemiological potential has improved dramatically based on prior knowledge of success and failure. Every year, new public health campaigns are started in efforts to change health outcomes and improve health behavior, but it must be understood public health is always changing and we must use what we have learned over the years to combat the ever so changing health world.
Rocha, C. M., Gomez-Arias, R. D., & Padron, G. J. (2011). International public health: Between
These are also problems that many people in many other countries also face. If we work together, we may be able to help each other and make this world better. In my opinion, there are several solutions that poor countries and wealthy countries working together could implement that would benefit both. Preventing diseases is every country’s responsibility, whether they are poor or rich. Poor countries lack the knowledge and the money to gain, and expand, medical resources.
The objectives of this essay is to identify and address the global health issues as whole including causes of these issues and impact of these issues. Also it is aim to address the preventive measures to reduce the global issues and report the methods for global health issues identified and understand the global health priorities with regards to major health issues throughout the world.
The global health crisis has been a major problem in recent years, probably the worst it has been in modern history. The least developed countries are the main victims of this problem, and many people believe that more powerful developed countries are not doing enough or helping out to try and eradicate this problem. The most deadly infectious diseases that are taking over the populations and killing millions of people are malaria, pneumonia, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, influenza, diarrheal diseases such as cholera and dysentery, and respiratory infections. These diseases are seriously threatening the political and economic structures of many LDC's, such as South Africa, Latin America, South and Southeast Asia. These infectious diseases are also increasingly affecting Russia, China, Europe and the United States. The economic costs of infectious diseases, most notably HIV/AIDS and malaria, are having a significantly heavy affect on productivity, profitability, and foreign investment. This will lead to growing GDP losses, that could reduce GDP by as much as 20 percent or more by 2010 in some Sub-Saharan African countries, according to recent studies2.