Improving Access to Healthcare
Improving Access to Healthcare
Access to healthcare is not easy for everyone. Such an access can be readily available for some while for others it may be difficult to extremely difficult or sometimes even unavailable due to several factors
Quick Facts
- The right to access acceptable and affordable health facilities is enshrined in the WHO Constitution.
- More than 1.3 billion out of human population lacks access to an acceptable health care.
- The term access to healthcare encompasses the characteristics of non discrimination, physical availability, affordability, and information pertaining to health services. The core contents of such a right include primary health care, healthy food, sanitation, water and essential drugs.
- It is the responsibility of states to ensure conditions whereby people can enjoy the best possible levels of health.
- Lack of access to healthcare affects the poor and developing countries the most. The women and children bear a disproportionately higher burden of this disparity.
Improving Access to Healthcare
Although on the face of it, individuals and communities seem to be having too little control in improving their access to healthcare, yet it indeed is possible to improve the situation.
Some of these measures are
- Sharing of resources:
Patients suffering from same diseases can opt for a group consultation with the physician whereby each patient gets an opportunity to meet the care provider to get personal attention while the general advice from the provider is delivered to the group.
- Training of paramedics:
There are several situations in which a properly trained paramedic or physician assistant can deliver a specific set of services under physician supervision and/or telephonic or IT assisted support.
- Utilization of Tele-health facilities:
With the popularization and easy availability of new technologies like computers, webcams, and voice transmission, it has now become feasible to arrange a dialogue between the providers and the recipients in improving access to health care.
- Emphasis on behavior change:
There is a need to modify individual and collective habits like encouraging consumption of low cost locally available and nutritious food, discouraging the use of addictive substances like alcohol, and improvement of physical activity levels.
- Health education:
The school education should cover knowledge of preventive health.
- Encourage volunteering in health facilities
- Make use of mass media to inform, educate, and train individuals and communities.
- Encourage health insurance policies customized as per the needs of communities
- Exhort people to go for, preventive checkups, screening, and vaccinations
- Invest in needs assessment and resource mobilization
- Train individuals in First Aid and CPR
- Improve the living standards by education, skill enhancement, and vocational training
- Reward the achievers and publicize their work
- Collaborate with neighboring communities and exchange resources with them as per needs
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The article is a part of our service to fellow human beings as a means of
health education and awareness enhancement to minimize dependence on healthcare
Dr Vinay Kumar
Senior Consultant Dermatologist
vnykmrrr123@gmail.com
www.yourskinmyconcern.com
+91-93
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