Week 9 - Monitoring Public Health in Developing Countries - Discussion Response



Week 9 - Monitoring Public Health in Developing Countries - Discussion Response

Response to Post by Martin Logo

The reduction of health inequalities should include socioeconomic factors and broader structural, considering the conditions, in which people are born, live, grow and age. Integrated policy approaches are needed to deal with the complexity of health inequalities, where there should be an inter-relationship between issues such as governance, environment, education, employment, social security, food, shelter, water, transport and energy (Phelan, Link & Tehranifar, 2010). Health policy in general and equality in health, in particular, depends on intersectoral decisions. Fundamentally, positive results in health cannot be achieved through isolated actions of the health sector. On the other hand, better health outcomes contribute to achieving goals in other sectors (Malmusi, Borrell & Benach, 2010). It's a two-way street where health functions both as a taxpayer as an indicator of development.

For a long time it was believed that non-communicable diseases could replace transmitted as major health problems (Mitchell & Popham, 2008). This means that public health policies in developing countries, which are geared towards infectious diseases, will have to adapt to this new reality, mainly because non-communicable diseases are a major cause of mortality and morbidity in the world, and their determinants are complex and extensive (Sgan-Cohen, Evans, Whelton, Villena, MacDougall, Williams, & Sheiham, 2013). Moreover, these conditions are shaped by factors including distal standards for national economic development and international culture, tradition, advertising, among others (Currie, Molcho, Boyce, Holstein, Torsheim & Richter, 2008). Not addressing the social determinants of health generates delay in the progress of global health, and as a way to illustrate this situation, cites national programs to control tuberculosis, showing a slow reduction in the incidence of the disease.

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