Preventable communicable, or infectious, diseases like cholera, malaria and HIV and AIDS account for millions of deaths in the world each year, especially in low-income countries like Ghana. Non-communicable, or chronic diseases like heart attacks, hypertension and diabetes are having an increasing effect across the globe. In whatever forms it comes, both communicable and non-communicable […]
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Preventable communicable, or infectious, diseases like cholera, malaria and HIV and AIDS account for millions of deaths in the world each year, especially in low-income countries like Ghana.
Non-communicable, or chronic diseases like heart attacks, hypertension and diabetes are having an increasing effect across the globe.
In whatever forms it comes, both communicable and non-communicable diseases could well be prevented through many concerted actions and efforts by individuals, and collectively by communities, and even by the State, through exercising, good rest and eating well and putting up interventions that could prevent diseases from striking.
All these could be achieved through the promotion of Primary Health Care (PHC) by stakeholders alike.
The International Conference on Primary Health Care at Alma Ata in 1978 in Kazakhstan (formerly Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic), defined PHC as “essential health care, based on practical, scientifically sound and socially acceptable methods and technology made universally accessible to individuals and families in the communities.
It is through their full participation, and at a cost, that the community and country can afford to maintain at every stage of their development in the spirit of self-reliance and self- determination”.
Eight components of PHC have been identified by experts as; Education concerning prevailing health problems and the methods of preventing and controlling them; the Promotion of food supply and proper nutrition; an adequate supply of safe water and basic sanitation; and maternal and child health care.
The rest are family planning; immunisation against the major infectious diseases; appropriate treatment of common diseases and injuries; and the provision of essential drugs.
Before the advent of PHC, various health paradigms were introduced and practiced by countries globally, among which was the traditional medical paradigm, which views health in terms of the presence or absence of signs and symptoms of disease in individuals, and, therefore, treatment was directed at removing the immediate causes of the signs and symptoms of the disease in the individual in a fixed health facility, such as hospitals, with the hope that the individual would be healthy.
Unfortunately, Ghana is still stuck to this traditional medical paradigm of providing health care at a stationary place even in this 21st century although other paradigms of reaching out to communities with health care services like the Onuador Mobile medicare health vans and the Community based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) were being practiced in some of the communities.
Dr George Amofah, a private Health Consultant, says this model of health was highly curative oriented, and drug and facility dependent and that any work in the community was thought to be a waste of time and certainly not befitting the medical practitioner.
However, a new social paradigm expanded the medical model by recognising that diseases have a social dimension and therefore placing a lot of emphasis on improving the environment especially the physical, biological and social environment.
Programmes undertaken under the social health paradigm may include water treatment, sanitation improvement, vector control and control of industrial pollution.
“The hope is that when these environmental determinants of health are controlled then people will be healthy,” Dr Amofa who is also a former Deputy Director General of Ghana Health Service has stated.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a socialist paradigm was proposed to improve upon the social paradigm.
This paradigm recognises that the determinants of health and ill-health were primarily to be found in the socio-economic and political environment in which people live.
There was therefore a focus on broad socio-economic development to improve upon the health status of the people in the community.
Health was therefore determined by a complex interaction between individual characteristics, lifestyle and the physical, social and economic environment.
Most experts agree that these ‘broader determinants of health’ are more important than health care or treatment in ensuring a healthy population.
Therefore the call by Dr Amofah, on stakeholders to pursue proven interventions that could prevent diseases as a better option to finding curative remedy for diseases when they strike is rightly in order.
“We must investigate and look for what is leading to an outbreak of a disease like cholera and find a holistic approach of addressing it to prevent it re-occurrence in a particular area or region”, Dr Amofah explained.
Source: GNA
To be continued on Tuesday
The post Prevention of diseases through Primary Health Care appeared first on The Chronicle - Ghana News.
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