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A cheaper way to better health

By Charles Kenny

26 February 2009

We can dramatically improve health outcomes and we can do so by adopting cheap and straightforward approaches.

Each year, about 10,000,000 children in poor countries die before the age of five, compared with roughly 100,000 children in high-income countries. Grim as the developing world’s death toll may be, it represents an improvement. Child mortality rates there have dropped by about 1 percent annually over the past 15 years. In 1950, about 25 percent of all children born in sub-Saharan Africa died before the age of five. Today, the number is closer to 16 percent.

This progress shows that relatively good health need not be expensive. It doesn’t take highly trained doctors or fully equipped hospitals. Instead, a few simple measures can lead to dramatic improvement.

Fully one-third of all child deaths in low-income countries each year could be prevented with three incredibly simple interventions, concluded the Bellagio Child Survival Group, a group of medical experts assembled by the Lancet in 2003. These are the use of a salt–sugar solution to treat diarrhea, which costs just a few cents; insecticide-treated bed nets to reduce malaria infections, which cost around $5 each; and promotion of breast feeding over bottle feeding–which saves money.

The cost of a basic primary health care package covering services such as maternal health care, vaccination, and nutrition, range from $2.82 per person a year in Cambodia to $6.25 in Guatemala. Such simple health care can be remarkably cost effective. Costa Rica, for instance, enjoys a life expectancy of 79 years, compared with 77 years in the United States. Yet Costa Rica spends $305 per capita a year on health care, while the United States spends $5,711—which happens to be about the average per capita global annual income.

In Vietnam, where life expectancy has reached the biblical standard of threescore years and ten, annual per capita health expenditures come to only $23. These examples show that much of good health isn’t about treatments; it’s about not getting ill in the first place. A lot of the rest is providing simple and rapid cures for common ailments.

Comment [5]

Agree? Disagree? Let us know what you think. Please include your full name with your comment. Comments may be edited.

HEALTH OFFICER INSTEAD OF MEDICAL OFFICER

Unfortunately, there is lot of incentive to be sick, namely, sick leave, sympathy, get-well card, employer funding the major cost of illness and last but not the least, belief that if I am sick there is treatment available. Alas, there is no incentive if you remain healthy; but does that matter at a personal level. Being healthy is the best thing that can happen to you whether anybody recognizes it or not.

Health is not everything, but without health everything is nothing. If people could understand this simple statement, it would do them a lot good.

Yes, there are lots of cheaper ways to good health. People have to know it and learn it either through personal experience (though not a nice way to know as the very purpose is not to get ill), through experience of close ones (friends, co-workers or family members); or people could be ‘taught’ at schools or workplace how to stay healthy.

Most of us go to schools and most of us also work. It is the best place to learn about one’s health too. In fact, corporations should not have medical officers but health officers. By appointing medical officers you are encouraging employees to fall sick and doctors to treat instead of preventing illnesses.

The health officer whether in school or in a corporation should ideally ‘teach / coach’ students and employees how to remain healthy.

Where the school or corporation cannot afford to employ a health officer; a visiting health officer will do. This is one of the many ways to reduce healthcare costs resulting in cheaper way to better health.

Lastly, but importantly, corporations should do everything to prevent or minimize the effect of work leading to ill-health.

Posted 1 December 2009, 10:30 by DR. AJAY SATI; Founder, AKS Consulting
Yes, totally agree with some of the comments made above. Especially in USA, where the patient base or prevalance is high for lots of diseases and sickness is due to poor eating habits and improper lifestyle.

Instead of spending too much money in developing drugs for these diseases and spending money on health insurance etc., it would save billions of dollars for USA if everyone or majority of the population take steps at their home to eat healthy and maintain proper lifestyle and also keep their digestive system clean to avoid so many diseases.

Also, other approach would be to consider cheaper and alternative medicine like homeopathy & ayurveda and the prices of these medicines controlled and monitored by any federal/regulatory agency.

Posted 6 November 2009, 04:53 by K N Prasad
I agree with this article. Change the way Americans live and it will change the way that we use the health care system. Lets not focus on sickness and disease, but lets focus on being well and healthy in the first place. We are looking for a means to the end before we are even unhealthy. We are making a country of people who believe they are always ill because they think that there is always a way to cure their sickness. Lets focus on being healthy. It will save our lifestyles and it will save our country and our pocketbooks!

Posted 21 October 2009, 16:09 by Sara
As a Public health Student i stronglly support this argument. Control of Infective Disease in Europe , before developement is a strong support in this favour.

Posted 21 March 2009, 09:42 by Ikram sattar Khan, India
How about a Kennedy’esque national challenge to get America moving, active and healthy by the end of the decade (ok the next decade).
Change the health care to well care culture in the good ole USA.

The potential savings from life style / behavorial diseases is in the billions.

Posted 11 March 2009, 20:45 by David Carrozza