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I liked the conference message from New York in this issue and your
editorial.
For decades now I have been trying to din into the heads of the
powers that be in the medical world that health has very little to do with
hospitals, doctors and their interventions.
In the global context health is only about supplying the basic needs
of the large majority with clean drinking water, three meals a day
uncontaminated with human and/or animal excreta, a roof on the top in
place of the star lit sky at night, proper sanitation to avoid hookworm
and other associated dangers, literacy to enable people to gain access to
information on healthy habits, compulsory schooling for all children,
especially the females of the species, getting people’s compliance with
family welfare measures that are people friendly, avoiding cooking smoke
coming into the house, and economic empowerment of poor women. These,
added to freeing the masses from suppression, oppression and denial in the
name of governance, religion etc will usher in a healthy society.
Do we doctors have any role in all these? Are we just trained to be
robots to intervene only when one is ill? Don’t we have an obligation to
try and keep the “well” healthy? Should not trainee doctors be taught
about their social consciousness and their social conscience? Public
health is looking after the health of the public and doctors’ primary role
should be in that area. Unfortunately, all the above basic needs of good
health are outside the control of doctors! No conference seems to address
this basic fundamental question. Such a conference will have to include
physicians, social leaders, politicians and leaders to bring in this basic
change in society’s thinking. Is it because there is no dowry in keeping
the well healthy while intervening in disease could be very lucrative that
we ignore that vital area of health? There are more questions than answers
in that area.
Yours ever,
bmhegde
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests:
No competing interests
23 November 2008
BM Hegde
Editor in Chief, Journal of the Science of Healing Outcomes
No marriage without dowry!
Dear Dr. Delamothe,
I liked the conference message from New York in this issue and your
editorial.
For decades now I have been trying to din into the heads of the
powers that be in the medical world that health has very little to do with
hospitals, doctors and their interventions.
In the global context health is only about supplying the basic needs
of the large majority with clean drinking water, three meals a day
uncontaminated with human and/or animal excreta, a roof on the top in
place of the star lit sky at night, proper sanitation to avoid hookworm
and other associated dangers, literacy to enable people to gain access to
information on healthy habits, compulsory schooling for all children,
especially the females of the species, getting people’s compliance with
family welfare measures that are people friendly, avoiding cooking smoke
coming into the house, and economic empowerment of poor women. These,
added to freeing the masses from suppression, oppression and denial in the
name of governance, religion etc will usher in a healthy society.
Do we doctors have any role in all these? Are we just trained to be
robots to intervene only when one is ill? Don’t we have an obligation to
try and keep the “well” healthy? Should not trainee doctors be taught
about their social consciousness and their social conscience? Public
health is looking after the health of the public and doctors’ primary role
should be in that area. Unfortunately, all the above basic needs of good
health are outside the control of doctors! No conference seems to address
this basic fundamental question. Such a conference will have to include
physicians, social leaders, politicians and leaders to bring in this basic
change in society’s thinking. Is it because there is no dowry in keeping
the well healthy while intervening in disease could be very lucrative that
we ignore that vital area of health? There are more questions than answers
in that area.
Yours ever,
bmhegde
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests