CHAPTER 1

• Health is a right from Article II, section 15, Philippine 1987 Constitution
• The Philippine government shall protect and promote the right to health of the people and instill health consciousness among them
• Every Filipino has the right to quality health care regardless of their status in society
• Health is a guide that the State has its accountability to ensure that every man, woman or child must have access to quality and equitable health care services
• Health (WHO definition)

  A state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and NOT merely the absence of a disease or infirmity
• Health is NOT just a biological or physiological manifestation of wellness
• Social well-being


  Implies that a person is free from any impediment that will obstruct him from achieving his/her personal goals and aspirations in life
• Poverty


  • Provide livelihood projects
• Health


  An enabling factor to achieve one's goal
• Public Health (C.E.A. Winslow definition)


  The science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life, and promoting health and efficiency through organized community efforts for the sanitation of the environment, the control of community infections, the education of the individual in personal health, the organization of medical and nursing services for the early diagnosis and preventive treatment of disease, and the development of the social machinery which will ensure to every individual in the community a standard of living adequate for the maintenance or improvement of health
• Public Health (WHO definition)

  Refers to all organized measures (whether public or private) to prevent disease, promote health, and prolong life among the population as a whole. Its activities aim to provide conditions in which people can be healthy and focus on entire populations, not on individual patients or diseases
• Public Health


  • COMMUNITY - Group of people with common characteristics or interests living together within a territory or geographical (physical boundary)
  • It deals with preventive rather than curative aspects of health
  • It is concern with population-level rather than individual-level health issues
• Public Health interdisciplinary approach

  Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Health services
• The three main public health functions

  • The assessment and monitoring of the health of communities and population at risk to identify health problems and priorities
  • The formulation of public policies designed to solve identified local and national health problems and priorities
  • To assure that all the populations have access to appropriate and cost effective care, including health promotion and disease prevention services
• In the pre-historic era, disease was viewed from a supernatural perspective
• There was no concept of public health since people were neither organized nor settled in one geographical area (nomads)
• Pre-historic peoples adopted "health-related practices" for religious purposes
• Pre-historic view of disease


  A person is sick because he/she has been cursed or punished by a deity or a supernatural being
• Pre-historic view of disease


  Disease is a supernatural event
• Pre-historic healers


  Only those "gifted" in explaining the inexplicable phenomenon can address the situation (e.g. babaylan)
• Shamans


  • Used medicinal herbs, usually gathered by most women in the tribe
  • used amulets, charms or spells that would supposedly ward off evil spirits that would cause illness
  • conducted ceremonies that would appease the gods or supernatural beings and eventually revert the curse that caused the illness
  • gave advice on how to maintain an illness-free life
• Geophagy


  Ingestion of clay or earth as a mode of treatment
• Trepanning was practiced (pre-historic health practice) – drilling a hole into a human skull, believing that the hole would release the evil spirit dwelling in the person causing illness; continued until medieval period
• Excavation and anthropological studies of ancient Egyptians revealed the establishments of rudimentary baths and toilets in dwelling places; high regards for personal cleanliness but the rationale was more religious than medical
• Ancient Egyptians developed a form of writing in keeping records on how certain illnesses should be cured or treated that served as references of their civilization
• Shamans evolved not just "summoners" of spirits and conduits of the gods' messages and medical advice but also "surgical" skills even inventing devices that appeared to be the prototypes of modern day surgical instruments
• Mummification was a form of taking care of the dead (Egyptians)
• Greek philosophers started to re-think the way Egyptians looked at health and illness and slowly digressed (tuned aside) from the perspective of the supernatural as the cause of illness and disease to a "rational" or "logical" paradigm
• Hippocrates, the father of Western medicine, contributed largely to the "professionalization" of medicine separating it from religious rituals and the supernatural
• Hippocrates' contributions


  • Coined the term epidemic (Epis - "on" or "akin to", Demos - "people")
  • Established causal relationships between disease and climate, water, lifestyle, and nutrition
• Hippocrates' book "De Aere, Aquis Et Locis" (Of Air, Water and Land) proposed that diseases develop due to our environment and NOT because of some form of divine act
• Hippocrates established the Hippocratic School of Medicine and was the first to use terms: acute, chronic, endemic, epidemic, paroxysms and exacerbation
• Paroxysm


  A sudden recurrence or attack of a disease; a sudden worsening of symptoms
• Exacerbation


  The process of making a problem, bad situation, or negative feeling worse; "a lack of stress reduction skills"
• Hippocrates' book "De Aere, Aquis Et Locis" may be considered the first rational guide to the establishment of science-based public health
• The Greeks had concepts of 4 Humors: 1. phlegm, 2. blood, 3. yellow bile, 4. black bile
• Romans spent more wealth and efforts in developing infrastructures that would develop their conquered states, such as building sewers and aqueducts
• Roman doctors learned much about health & medicine through wounded warriors or gladiators in the battlefield and arenas, which became their learning halls
• Romans preferred studying on living persons rather than dissecting corpses, thus resulting in dissecting animals
• Galen, a Greek physician who migrated to Rome, dissected monkeys and his works became the foundation of Human Anatomy and scientific dogma through the Medieval Period