Sano Meru
Health is multi factorial. The factors which influence health lay both within the individual and the external environment he or she belongs to. I believe that the disease one fall victim to, depends on a combination of at least these set of factors: his genetic make up, his environment, the culpable organism he encounters and his habits etc. The term ‘public health’ came into general use around 1840. It arose with the need to protect the public from spreading communicable diseases. Today the term is applied to any action taken to promote health, prevent diseases, control the spread of diseases and rehabilitate those affected by diseases in the community. It thus implies involvement of adequate knowledge about the disease causing agent, the environment, the physical and health status of the person and the predisposing habits for respective diseases in order to apply appropriate measures to safeguard the desired well being of the public.
Promoting health involves proper diet, exercise, rest, sleep and taking whatever precaution necessary to stay healthy. Very often, knowledge of facts alone does not lead to ideal behavior and therefore in public health, it becomes necessary to regulate behaviors in order to keep it controlled. Sadly, that does not always succeed. (A classic example is the failure of the Nagaland Liquor Prevention Act, which was meant to prevent the untold miseries faced by our society due to alcoholism and of course the banning of smoking in public places etc.) Knowledge alone without a proper attitude for change will not achieve anything and therefore there is the need for proper education. For this very reason health education is one of the main pillars of public health. Applying these to our community, it implies that our citizens must be educated about diseases and their prevention; we must have sufficient supply of food stuff for proper diet, hygienic water supply and our houses must be kept healthful with proper household drainages leading to public drainages. There must not be any careless dumping of waste materials but should be disposed properly. We must also use sanitary latrines. Immunization and other disease prevention programs should be freely available. Facilities for treating sick people should be accessible and we should follow whatever rules and regulations the State legislated. A system for tackling any unexpected incidence of public health emergency or epidemic must be in place.
In public health certain ‘health indicators’ are used to measure the health status of a community. It will be interesting to know a few indicators of our own state, Nagaland as given below:
1. IMR- 46 per 1000 live births.
4. CBR-15 per 1000 population.
2. MMR-8 per 1000 live births.
5. Life expectancy at birth- 60 yrs.
3. CDR-3 per 1000 population.
The application of scientific principles and methods in the management of health, both of the individual and community has come a long way from the time when all health and sicknesses, fortune and misfortunes were attributed to favors or curses of ‘evil’ spirits who were believed to have such influence over our destiny.
In a society like ours, just emerged from an animistic and superstitious background, one should not be surprised if things like the application of modern science as in public health take a little longer to take root as certain level of scientific enlightenment and economic affluence is desirable. However, judging from what it is today, we are flooded with information on every subject, including the matter in discussion. A progressive society like ours stands much better chances to catch up with the rest of the world in this field. The long bridge to cross over to a healthy community is a change of our attitude toward what is right and to avoid the harmful.
