Health care

by

Brandon Lee

Health care (or healthcare ) is the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease (an abnormal condition affecting the body of an organism), illness (sometimes referred to as ill-health or ailment ; a state of poor health), injury, and other physical and mental impairments in humans.

Health care is delivered by practitioners in: medicine– Doctor of Medicine ( MD ), a doctoral degree for physicians; chiropractic, a form of complementary and alternative medicine concerned with the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disorders of the neuromusculoskeletal system and the effects of these disorders on general health; dentistry, the branch of medicine that is involved in the study, diagnosis, prevention and treatment of diseases, disorders and conditions of the oral cavity, the maxillofacial area and the adjacent and associated structures, and their impact, in the human body; nursing, a profession within the health care sector focused on the care of individuals, families, and communities so they may attain, maintain, or recover optimal health and quality of life; pharmacy, the health profession that links the health sciences with the chemical sciences and it is charged with ensuring the safe and effective use of pharmaceutical drugs; allied health profession, health care professions distinct from dentistry, nursing, medicine, and pharmacy; and other health care providers, or individuals or institutions that provide preventive, curative, promotional, or rehabilitative health care services in a systematic way to individuals, families or communities.

Health care refers to the work done in providing primary care, secondary and tertiary care, as well as in public health, or the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized the efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals (1920, C.E.A. Winslow).

Access to health care varies across countries, groups and individuals, largely influenced by social and economic conditions as well as the health policies– decisions, plans, and actions that are undertake to achieve specific health care goals within a society –in place. Countries and jurisdictions have different policies and plans in relation to the personal and population-based health care goals within their societies. Health care systems is the organization of people, institutions, and resources to deliver health care services to meet the health needs, or the level of functional or metabolic efficiency of a living being, of target populations. Their exact configuration varies from country to country. In some countries and jurisdictions, health care planning is distributed among market participants, whereas in others planning is made more centrally among governments and/or other coordinating bodies. In all cases, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) that is concerned with international public health, a well-functioning health care system requires a robust financing mechanism; a well-trained and adequately paid workforce; reliable information on which to base decisions and policies; and well maintained facilities and logistics to deliver quality medicines and technologies– Health human resources ( HHR ), also known as human resources for health ( HRH ), or health workforce, is defined as all people engaged in actions whose primary intent is to enhance health, according to the WHO s World Health Report 2006 ; while health policy can be defined as the decisions, plans, and actions that are undertaken to achieve specific health care goals within a society.

Health care can form, a significant part of a country s economic system, or a system for producing, distributing and consuming goods and services, including the combination of the various institutions, agencies, consumers, entities (or even sectors as described by some authors) that comprise the economic structure of a given society or community. In 2008, the health care/medical industry, a sector within the economic system that provides goods and services to treat patients with curative, preventive, rehabilitative, and palliative care, consumed an average of 9.0 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), the market value of all officially recognized final goods and services produced within a country in a given period of time, across the most developed countries which is a member of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development ( OECD ), an international economic organization of 34 countries founded in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and world trade. The United States (16.0%), France (11.2%), and Switzerland (10.7%) were the top three spenders.

Health care is conventionally regarded as an important determinant in promoting the general health and well-being of people around the world. An example of this is the worldwide eradication of smallpox, an infectious disease unique to humans, caused by either of two virus variants, variola major and variola minor, on 1980–declared by the WHO as the first disease in human history to be completely eliminated by deliberate health care interventions.

Brandon Lee

East End, London

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