History Healthcare

Since the subject of healthcare is so broad, I am providing the milestones and events on healthcare issues that I hope/plan to address in the future. As other issues appear that are not addressed in here, I will just add background info then.

“WHO's objective, as set out in its Constitution, is the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health. The Constitution defines health as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”- World Health Organization

In 1948 the World Health Organization (WHO) established their global role of “providing leadership on global health matter, shaping the health research agenda, setting norms and standards, articulating evidence-based policy options, providing technical support to countries and monitoring and assessing health trends” (WHO 2010). The 193 countries that apply to this Constitution range from Malawi to Austria, and detailed publications and statistics are readily available to the general public on all of them. This will become especially useful when statistics and countries’ health policies are needed.

Another milestone in public health was the famous Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision to legalize abortion in the first months of pregnancy, overturning Texas’ abortion law at the time in 1973. The controversy surrounding abortion is still a fragile subject due to religious and cultural ideologies on when the embryo is considered “human”. These ideas date back to the time of Aristotle where they thought the fetus “begins to live” 40 days after conception for males and 90 days for females. Although Roe v. Wade was a stepping stone in women’s reproductive rights, it leads us to question how well our health education system is on preventing these more or less unwanted situations.

A New York Times article on abortion in China stated that 13 million abortions are performed each year. The women’s age range from 20-29 and around half of them did not use contraception during intercourse. According to a pregnancy hotline in Shanghai, only 30% of callers knew about contraception and around 70% did not know that HIV/AIDS is a sexually transmitted disease. Abortion became legal in 1953, and due to the preference of males and one-sided gender population (32 million more boys than girls!), gender-preference abortion became illegal in 1994. Similar situations where young populations are uneducated on important health issues on pregnancy and STDs and STIs are apparent in other countries as well, especially developing countries. In the documentary “I Am Because We Are”, Malawi has an estimated 1 million orphans mainly due to the AIDS virus.

Though some cultures may not know how to accept certain concepts of modern medicine such as contraceptives, more fortunate others have taken responsibility to do what they can. Andrew Witty, chief executive of GlaxoSmithKline, the world’s largest pharmaceutical company, has promised not to charge poor countries (mainly in Africa and Latin America) more than 25% the cost of drugs than they do in rich countries, and to donate 20% of GSK’s profits from the poor countries to building health systems.