Finland's Healthcare System: Prevention

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History

The current state of healthcare provision in Finland can be traced to its roots beginning prior to the Second World War and just before Nazi occupation in the region. Tuberculosis and infectious disease was responsible for nearly one in three Finn deaths, particularly among the younger population of the time. (Koskinen, 2006) As such, government-sponsored healthcare was primarily rendered in tuberculosis sanitaria distributed throughout the country and initially divided into tuberculosis districts known today as municipalities.

After the war Finland increased its welfare to accommodate a network of regionally sponsored maternity and child-care centers and immunization programs which grew from the prolific availability of midwives and public nurses who were available on a much larger scale than trained physicians. The eventual eradication of tuberculosis and control of other infectious disease rendered the sanitaria less useful and they were absorbed into approximately twenty government hospital districts throughout the country that were soon found ill equipped to care for more serious diseases by the sixties. (Jutta, 2002) According to Teperi, life expectancy for 40-year-old Finnish males was the lowest in Europe in the late 1960s. (Teperi, 2009) Moreover, the relative sizes of the facilities and populations who sought care from these hospital districts dictated an imbalance in the per hospital expenditure level and quality of care.

In the years that followed, numerous health acts were passed through legislative measures that sought to provide Finland’s residents with various types of public health care assistance. Today, the people of Finland are among the best cared for inhabitants of the planet. The str...

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