Why we have to be active when it concerns our health. The health care team can’t do it alone.

(photo credit: pixshark)

Our health is the greatest wealth we have on earth. If you need more proof of this, try visiting the hospitals, especially the reanimation unit. We live in a time where information is no longer hidden. Patients go to the hospital and they are able to say when a nurse is doing something wrong. However, that is not where we have to exercise the knowledge we have. We should rather exercise the knowledge we have at home: living healthy through our diet and lifestyle.

The health care team is doing all the best they can to help the society attain the highest possible level of health. Everyone is tired of getting ill. So many people are aware of the medication they need to purchase when they fall ill. However people are not aware of what they have to do to prevent illnesses. Some people in developing countries are fond of blaming doctors and nurses that all they do is treat diseases and do little to teach them how to prevent diseases. Here are some reasons why people in developing countries have to be active when it concerns our health.

1 The health care team has a huge amount of work load

The amount of work that is done by the health care team is too much for them to handle. That is why they mostly focus on curative medicine rather than preventive medicine. According to Africapedia, the average ratio of Doctors to patients in Cameroon is 19 for every 100,000 people. That of Nigeria is 28 per 100,000 while that of Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Malawi being as low as 3 Doctors per 100,000 people. See the full list of Doctor to patient ratio in Africa here. 

This therefore means that although the health care sector is willing to teach the population about health promotion and prevention strategies, they cannot do it because they lack time and not because they don’t want to do it. It will cause you no harm if you try to get books that teach about health and read.

2 Brain drain and migration of qualified staff

This is also another problem faced in so many developing countries. Because of so many reasons, qualified health persons especially nurses, migrate to other countries, especially USA, Canada and Australia where they receive  high salaries. This further contributes to shortage of staff and more work on those who decide to work in their countries. So we can’t really depend on the health care team to do everything for us.

We definitely do not need Doctors to follow us to our homes and tell us to cut down on the salt or sugar. There are little things we can do every day to bring us good health. Everybody has a part to play when it comes to having good health. Its is better to learn how to maintain good health now rather than learning how to manage diseases tomorrow.