Today is World Health Day.
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In our childhood we memorize one proverb " Early to be and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise". May be following the said proverb we can achieve wealth and knowledge but what about health. As we are in the age of pollution(water,air,soil), the control of health is not always in our hand. Everyday when we step out from our home facing the pollution. At street air pollution, consume contaminated food while eating, take unsafe water during drinking. So, all these factors are correlated with good health. If we assume that we are in a pollution free environment, then only this is possible. But in practical, water and air pollution, contamination in food and lifestyle are basic aspects that is not under control which are causing major diseased like cancer, respiratory, heart, diabetes and kidney diseases. In addition to the pollution the rise of chronic diseases has been driven by primarily four major risk factors: tobacco use, physical inactivity, the harmful use of alcohol and unhealthy diets.
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So, what is next? Can we solve above problems now or within one day or in a year?
The answer is no! This is a continious process.
The thing we can only do is the better treatment for the diseases. If we see some of the chronic diseases death rate, the number is really high. According WHO (world health organization)- Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), including heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes and chronic lung disease, are collectively responsible for almost 70% of all deaths worldwide. Almost three quarters of all NCD deaths, and 82% of the 16 million people who died prematurely, or before reaching 70 years of age, occur in low- and middle-income countries.
The leading causes of NCD deaths in 2015 were cardiovascular diseases (17.7 million deaths, or 45% of all NCD deaths), cancers (8.8 million, or 22% of all NCD deaths), and respiratory diseases, including asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (3.9 million). Diabetes caused another 1.6 million deaths.
One of the reasons of these deaths are inadequete health facilities for the people. For some cases the OOP(out of pocket) health expenditure is high to do the treatment. OOP health expenditure means the portion of health expenditure that people privately spend for health reasons. According WHO, OOP percentage is the highest in South and Southeast asian regions followed by India 62% while rest of the global average is 32%.
So, to reduce health risk OOP should be reduced. Then only we can march forward to good health. As we do not have control of our diseases, the only control is OOP. Each country government have a big role here to support their people.
As today is wold health day, wrote above some points which felt from my heart and believe the topic is for all as there is no alternative of good health.
Thanks for reading.