Improving Public Health in India: Challenges and Solutions

Infant mortality rate/life expectancy

The waterborne disease is mostly spread out in northeast India. Gajrawedi has the highest rate (21-27) per 10000 people. The lowest rate (00-06) is in the west side of India, Subhanpura, and Sayajigunj. Cities like Raopura, Shiyabaug, and Sidhvaimata road have a mid-range rate of infections.

The sanitation in northeast India may not be clean, therefore, the water may be contaminated while transporting it, resulting in an unstable water supply.

There is a very high population in India, people may share water and transfer disease.

Areas with a high infection rate may have less affluent and probably don’t provide any facility to purify or filtrate the water.

Approaches to Improving Public Health

There are two main approaches to improving the health of a population: Curative – treatment of disease Primary – treatment mixed with prevention of disease, and prevention of escalation of disease. Some prevention programs are undoubtedly cost-effective. For example, the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine significantly reduced the incidence of the diseases amongst children, for a relatively low cost. The cost of treating an outbreak of the disease can be much higher. Ultimately, in almost every case, primary care that prevents disease and disability would be considered more beneficial. However, there are several factors that would interfere with this general approach and promote a curative program instead. Prevention is good if the disease is known and studied, but curative will be more reliable if the disease is unknown. For example, HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa in the 1980s, people didn’t know about this disease, so they wouldn’t know how to prevent it. Therefore, they will need to cure it. An endemic disease, such as malaria, where it exists in such large numbers of people that it would not be possible to use a primary care approach without at least having a curative approach alongside. Nevertheless, to completely solve the healthcare problem, the government will need to spend more time and money on prevention. Preventive and curative are both long-term solutions. For example, educating people about the diseases will be helpful to prevent the disease, because they will have the knowledge of the disease and avoid it. Africa has poor access to education, therefore, there is a high rate of epidemic disease. Prevention may also be cheaper than curative, since curative may take a long time to cure, such as cancer.

I believe that spending on treatments or medicines has of proportionately equal importance as of managing causes. Also, some diseases are too fatal that even an advanced cannot cure it, therefore, prevention will be a crucial tactic.