70th World Health Day Today. How Healthy Are you?

Hey friends!

Wishing you a very healthy life to you on this World Health Day.

Humanity is celebrating World Health Day for past seven decades now. Sponsored by World Health Organization (WHO), this day is observed by all its member countries.

World Health Day is one of the 8 official global health campaign marked by WHO. But is the world becoming healthier than before?

This is the question that often comes to my mind. Are we today healthier than what we were in 1950 or in 1970s?

No doubt, we have devised several new drugs and medicines, medical procedures and hi-tech diagnostic & operative equipment. But we have also faced several life-threatening diseases and health risks in this period. So where do we stand overall?

Every year, WHO announces a different theme for this day. Whether it was "oral health for a healthy life" or "Road Safety" or something else, none of them seems to accomplish any significant results. Of course, one year is too less a time frame to achieve anything substantial for such missions.

May be, that's why this year, WHO chose not to mark 2019 a different theme and continues the previous year's theme of "Universal Health Coverage : everyone, everywhere".

What do we need to achieve Universal health care?

I see the ever-growing emphasis on increasing the presence of allopathic hospitals, medical colleges and health insurance packages. But does this assure health for all?

Why is there no talk of alternative health infrastructure? Why Ayurveda & Siddha hospitals are decreasing? Why budgets for Ayurvedic medical colleges and hospitals are being restrained?

In my state there are only two Government run Naturopathy hospitals and those too are not allocated sufficient budget to carry their day to day operations. The one in my city constantly keep looking for donations. Should I remind that my state is the largest state in India geographically?

I have interacted with several naturopathic doctors to find out the reasons behind declining public interest in these age old practice. I found the biggest reason is that these processes take a very long time to get the results as compared to instant recovery with modern allopathic medicines. Patients also have to contribute physically to contribute in his / her own recovery.

However treatment isn't too costly but the cost of time in the form of the lost earnings for the time invested in the recovery makes it unaffordable for most of the people. So in my opinion, Government contribution and insurance packages to reimburse the indirect cost of loss of working time is needed to make this as a popular option.

I think it's a better idea to invest in the reimbursement instead of investing in costly infrastructure for modern medicines. Modern medicines do deliver instant results but with a high cost and risk of side-effects & allergies. On the other hand, Naturopathy and other alternative systems are far cheaper but take a longer time to deliver the results. But those results are more desirable.

However I agree that modern medical system is suitable for traumatic injury cases but that should not be recommended as a go-to place for all your ailments.

• What do you guys think?
• Do you prefer any alternative medicine system or are you in favour of having only one unified medical system to cure the world?

May all beings be healthy!