Hyderabad: Public health has gained importance in the time of the coronavirus, which has affected the world. From one patient in China on 1 December 2019, the virus has spread across the globe to around 200 countries or areas infecting close to 6 lac individuals and killing around 1% of them in just around 4 months’ time.
No disease in human history has travelled so quickly to so many places and have affected so many people. While the medical response to the disease is underway, it is limited to only 1-10% of the population.
Beyond the clinical care, it has affected the movement of people – and that of goods and services - across the globe, within countries, between cities, and now across the houses too. What is the apparently healthy 90% of the world population is asked to sit at home? How are we contributing by isolating ourselves?
This is where public health – that involves people, beyond patients – comes in.
When a person feels uneasy, he/she approaches a healthcare provider, gets diagnosis done, consumes medicines, and ensures care as prescribed. This results in healing.
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This journey of medical care for individual patients involves medical and para-medical staff. Public health interventions, on the other hand, are organized efforts by many people for many people, unlike treating patients.
They are done to protect the population from the possibilities of illness and injuries and ensure that they remain physically, financially and socially fit. It requires a much wider and deeper understanding of a range of determinants of health.
In case of coronavirus, the public health efforts include a) awareness generation activities in the form of improving the knowledge that leads to changing in the behaviour of people, b) minimizing the possibilities of transmission through restriction of movement through a lockdown and social distancing and handwashing for all possible persons and disinfection of all possible spaces, c) identification and isolation of suspected persons, d) quarantine and treatment of infected individuals, and e) reducing social and financial effect on the affected or infected families.
These efforts are beyond individual treatment in clinics and hospitals and are done by non-medical persons for the entire community through organized efforts.
The coronavirus has very interesting connections with a) population and development in terms of migration and urbanization, b) microeconomics in terms of loss of income, and financial implication of diagnosis and treatment, and macroeconomics in terms of reallocation of resources for prevention and control of the pandemic, and mitigating the effect of the recession, c) social and behavioural science in terms of socialization and social distancing, d) management for logistical and supply of medical and non-medical essentials, e) statistics to better predict the course of the epidemic and plan responses, f) governance, and law and order, and g) financing to ensure fair redistribution of existing and emerging resources to tackle the economic impact of the disease.
The public health efforts will do to the 21st century what Antibiotics and vaccines did in the 20th century. The coronavirus pandemic has shown this premise for future actions.
