By Karun Lama
Healthcare’ is the most important element in life. In the prevailing times, our first priority has always been maintaining good health while ‘education’, ‘entertainment’ etc come next to it. For instance, a sick person will always opt for visiting a doctor rather than attending a lecture, seminar or watching a movie.
Good health is the most valuable asset that a person can have. One might have to give away everything when it comes to paying the price for regaining one’s health once it deteriorates irrespective of how rich or poor the person is. Having aware of this fact, small negligence may lead to a great loss and perhaps one’s life. One can see tragic scenes of countless people suffering in hospitals every day.
Malnutrition has been a major reason across the globe for various diseases resulting in the reduction of one’s life span and even loss of life. In India, major health issues arise due to malnutrition. It includes deficiencies, excesses in a person’s diet which result in an imbalance in the body height-weight ratio and its growth and development. Also, it leads to non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, heart diseases and so on.
Reports say that malnutrition has prominently affected states like Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Bihar in the recent past.
HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, diarrhoea, malaria, pneumonia are some major communicable diseases which have claimed countless lives all over the world.
According to the 2018 Global Hunger Index (GHI) prepared jointly by global NGOs namely, Concern Worldwide (Ireland) and Welthungerhilfe (Germany), published on October 10, 2018, India was ranked 103rd out of 119 qualifying countries, which gives a distressing insight into the present scenario in our nation.
The World Health Organisation and other health-related organisations have been playing a vital role in the governance of health and diseases globally. WHO’s main objective, being the attainment by all people of the highest possible level of health, focuses primarily on eradicating communicable diseases as its current priorities.
Every year, on April 7, World Health Day is celebrated all over the world under the sponsorship of WHO and other health organisations as a global health awareness day. WHO had laid its foundation on the same date back in 1948 and with immediate effect from 1950, the day is commemorated with a specific health theme every year. Well, the theme for 2019 is Universal health coverage: everyone, everywhere. As the name suggests, Universal Health Coverage is about ensuring access to quality health services for all people and communities.
A lot of efforts has been put in by various organisations at both national and international levels to build a healthy world. However, the major challenge lies within us, each one of us i.e. at the individual level.
Keeping oneself and the surroundings clean, consuming healthy food, regular exercises, proper nutrition, human interaction and so on are the principle duties which one must do in order to live a happy and healthy life. According to a report by WHO in 2018, India is the most depressed country in the world among all others. One would be shocked to know that about 300 million people worldwide are suffering from depression. A person is healthy only when he or she is in good physical and mental condition.
Nowadays, people are more dependent on medicines. Medicines and treatment costs have also risen higher with inflation. What if instead of medicines, we spend on good food and nutritious products before it’s late? There is a famous saying by Thomas Edison – “The doctor of the future will no longer treat the human frame with drugs, but rather will cure and prevent disease with nutrition.” This gives us a vision to work ahead for disease-free and healthy lives across the whole world. In order to make this a reality, we must treat each day as a health day, literally meaning to place ‘health’ in the first place throughout the journey of our life.
(The author is a student of MA in Political Science)
(References: Wikipedia and WHO official website)