Health: State About Which Medicine Has Nothing to Say
2 pages
Published by
Dr Michel ODIKA
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All rights reserved
Health : State About Which Medicine
Has Nothing to Say
Michel ODIKA
Health is the state about which medicine has nothing to say (W.
H.
AUDEN)
Equity, whether in health, wealth or power is rarely, if ever, fully achieved.
Some...
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Health : State About Which Medicine
Has Nothing to Say
Michel ODIKA
Health is the state about which medicine has nothing to say (W.
H.
AUDEN)
Equity, whether in health, wealth or power is rarely, if ever, fully achieved.
Some communities and societies are more egalitarian than others certainly, but
on the whole the world is “unequal”.
Yet the desire for better protection of
health, for less health inequity and for more participation in decision-making
process that affect health increasingly becomes more intense than it was a few
decades ago.
Now more than ever, people do not think about health only in
terms of sickness or injury, but also in terms of what they perceive as
endangering their health and that of their community.
Therefore, much more is
expected, so that an increasing number of people expect health and something
else…
The extent of health inequities is now largely documented, not only between
countries but equally within countries.
They predominantly stem from social
stratification, historical legacy, and, not least, global mismanagements that lie
outside the traditional boundaries of the health system.
Also taken into
consideration are income inequalities, the neighbourhoods where people live,
their employment conditions, stress and other factors – i.
e.
personal behavior
(alcohol abuse, tobacco addiction…).
Apart from the way clinical practice is
conducted, health inequities also find their roots in the way health systems
exclude some people, thereby exacerbating inequities in availability, access,
quality and burden of payment.
Differences in vulnerabilities combined with deeply unequal opportunities lead
to pervasive inequities in health outcomes – e.
g.
in terms of mortality ratios and
life expectancy.
Around the world these regressive patterns tend to exacerbate,
rather than to mitigate, the whole spectrum of unnecessary, avoidable and unfair
differences.
It takes a wide range of actions and interventions to fight the global
determinants of health and make health systems contribute to further justice.
These actions and interventions reach well beyond the traditional realm of
health-services policies, relying on the mobilization of the largest possible
number of stakeholders and constituencies outside the health sector and across
organizational boundaries.
They primarily include subsidized public services
designed to reduce social distortions – e.
g.
by reducing the adverse
consequences associated with income inequalities through tax-based and/or
social health insurance.
What needs to be done is also to reduce vulnerabilities
by:
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