By Christeter Macha-Chizhyuka –
It often takes little effort and finances to prevent something from happening than to deal with its effects. The adage ‘prevention is better than cure’ thus becomes valid.
This adage is not only applicable to human beings but also machinery. Cars, for example, need servicing quite a number of times to prevent a major fault.
For human beings, repairing could mean going to the clinic to access drugs to avoid one dying and the family spending huge sums of money on funeral costs.
Common prevention approaches such as regular hand washing after visiting the lavatory prevent illnesses like cholera and diarrhoea from spreading.
According to the World Health Organisation, taking steps to prevent a disease from developing in the first place may lead to earlier diagnoses, resulting in earlier treatment and potentially a better survival rate.
Prevention of diseases can be enhanced if communities are given basic information on, for example, washing hands after using a lavatory.
Apart from ensuring better survival rate through health promotion, it could actually lower expenses on drugs in health centres or on families.
The health promotion undertakings critically take into scrutiny the elements or main causes of bad health in communities such as way of life, certain cultures or social processes.
Health promotion and disease prevention is aimed at identifying risk factors for diseases so that information about these risk factors can then be shared with local people.
As earlier indicated, prevention and health promotion could save a country like Zambia huge expenditures on drugs.
Under the newly created Directorate of Health Promotion, Environment and Social Determinants, the Ministry of Health emphasises prevention as the best way to go by taking health services to the people using primary health care.
The Pharmaceutical Services Unit under the Ministry of Health in its 2015 terms of reference for the Zambia National Medicines Study revealed that in most developing countries pharmaceuticals are the largest public expenditure on health, after personnel costs, and are the largest household health expenditure.
Governments in developing countries including Zambia spend 20 to 50 per cent of their national budgets on drugs and medical sundries.
Director of Health Promotion, Environment and Social Determinants Kennedy Malama agrees and revealed that currently the country’s budget on drugs is about K769 million.
Dr Malama explained that focusing on health promotion would not only enhance the quality of life for all people but reduce significantly the costs on medical treatment.
Health promotion is the development of individual, group, institutional, community and systemic strategies to improve health knowledge, attitudes, skills and behaviour.
The purpose of health promotion is to positively influence the health behaviour of individuals and communities as well as the living and working conditions that influence their health.
Dr Malama explained that the Ministry of health now has a transformation agenda which has four components of health care delivery namely Health Promotion, Disease Prevention, Control and Treatment.
“A lot of diseases can be prevented if we invest more in prevention of diseases and promoting good health,” he emphasised.
The first component of the transformation agenda ensures strengthened health promotion starting from communities so that more people have information on healthy living hence less people going to clinics and hospitals.
The fact that health is determined by factors not only within the health sector but also by those outside, has provoked the newly created Directorate to work according to its title to engage other stakeholders to enhance inter-sectoral linkages and collaboration to actualise the strategy.
In doing that, the Directorate is in the process of creating city health facilities where catchment areas will be identified to provide community based health care.
“This is going to happening in cities such as Lusaka, Ndola, Kitwe and others. Here we shall for example pick on an area such as Matero Township, engage health promoters to educate and sensitise the community on good health. If we target a school, the same will happen,” Dr Malama explained.
Further, Dr Malama revealed that to ensure success of the health promotion exercise, the ministry will have health promotion officers in all the 105 districts in the country.
This he said will change the approach from disease attention to health attention.
To further intensify health promotion activities, the Directorate will ensure the presence of one health promotion officer in all big health facilities around the country.
Thus, the Directorate held a technical working group (TWG) meeting whose objectives were to inform TWG members of organisational changes at the Ministry of Health and to share the overview of health promotion in view of the created new department.
Other objectives of the meeting were to review terms of references for the TWG, to update the health promotion partner list and to plan for the coordination of national and international days.
Emphasis was on the need for the meeting to bring out constructive ideas on how best to showcase implementation of health promotions.
In these activities health promoters will need to transfer all necessary knowledge to the community in order to assure the responsibility of the rest of the factors in health control.
With intensified efforts, communities will be aware that choosing good healthy life styles and healthy life habits is necessary to avoid the risk of individual and environmental pollution.
Through health promotion, people will have increased control over their health through advocacy and inter-sectoral action such as was seen during the TWG meeting.
The Cuban national health system, like the Zambian Ministry of Health has oriented health services as integral through health promotion, disease prevention, and recovery and rehabilitation for free.
A term coined in 1945 and remains relevant today by Henry E. Sigerist, the great medical historian, health promotion could just be the way to go if diseases are to be prevented and expenditure on drugs reduced. – ZANIS/