Today is the global health day. Each year,
April 7 is when the world celebrates its Health Day. Every year the World
Health Organisation draws our attention to a weakness in our health systems as
a wake up call towards health. This year it’s that nagging issue of the still
dire lack of health care coverage for much of the world. Half the world's
population even in this day and age lack the resources to do so. Not because
they can’t but because their health systems have not been planned to do so.
Forty years ago in Alma Ata in Kazakhstan,
WHO and UNICEF got together at a historic meeting to introduce Primary Health
Care to the world as an approach for attaining Health for All by the year 2000.
It was about affordable and culturally acceptable appropriate technology
spearheading the access to health care into a movement. And it did wonders to
demystify medical care and provide an alternative that was a less costly, yet effective
care that revolutionised the movement for health all over the world.
Maldives was a clear beneficiary of this and
our present national health situation could be unequivocally attributed to the
dedicated application of the principles of primary health care in their
essence. The community health workers and their dedicated effort on prevention
rather than cure pushed down an outrageous national IMR of 150 per 1000 in 1975 to just
about 30 per 1000 in the next 20 years in a context of no doctor present. These
PHC’s unsung heroes gave their life for this cause and a nation benefited. No
more childhood diseases, no scary diarrheas, no leprosy or malaria and even TB
was driven to a level that was no more a public health problem.
Today however the NCDs have taken over and
instead of the health centres of yore we now have gleaming hospitals to take
care of the sick. It is time for us to give another lease to the idea of
prevention. The young people now succumbing to cancers and heart diseases and
diabetes can’t be addressed by treating these when they show up as disease but
before they have a chance to show themselves as diseases. And that is through
prevention.
But this can only happen when we ride our
motorcycles a bit less each day, desist from eating all that junk food and
crushing out those nasty cigarette packs that fool the youth generation after generation.
I tell them it’s not cool to smoke and not exercise and gorge on these fast
foods. But one voice is not enough; we need a resurgent voice in unison and
attendant rules and regulations that are enforced; we need schools and homes
that nurture healthy habits and a community that pulls together for the
perpetuation of thee good habits. All this requires effort at the community
level. Simple yet effective prevention and advocacy that is the essence of
primary health care.
Yet again it’s time for PHC to be revived and
reapplied. It’s truly a timeless concept and kudos to WHO for bringing this
into view again. Yet, blessed as we are
with universal coverage in Maldives, we need to be mindful of not being wasteful
in using this blessing and supplement it with the good habits that will make
our body smile and say “if you look after me for the first 50 years, I will
look after you for the next 50”.
