Joseph Angli: Health Promotion and Healthy Island Concept: Way forward for Health Care

While Papua New Guinea is suffering and trying to cure Communicable Diseases (CD), it is now bombarded with the burden of addressing emerging Non Communicable Diseases (NCD). CDs are diseases that can pass on from an infected person to another while NCDs also known as Lifestyle Diseases are those that come about as a result of peoples' unhealthy lifestyle/behavior. Eg, of CDs include but not limited to diseases like malaria, HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis etc and examples of NCDs include unhealthy conditions like obesity, mental stress disorder, high blood pressure etc.

Our approach to fight against such double burden disease pattern is more focused on treating/curing and not prevention when we should be balancing both the treatment and prevention methods for the battle against diseases and unhealthy condition. There should be some sort of tracking and monitoring system in place at the point of health care to keep a record of diseases and the people suffering from these abnormalities. The latter part will be discussed later.

A way forward would be back to basic approach where health promotion is very much part of the treatment for infirmities. That was the practice before independence and it has resulted in having had good health indicators (National Health Plan 2011-2020). Then we have the Healthy Island Concept which is in fact a sub topic under the Program called Health Setting being introduced into Asia Pacific in 1995.

Let us define Health Promotion and Healthy Island.

Healthy Setting is an intervention and a generic name for sub topics like Healthy Island, Healthy Marketplace, Healthy Villages, Healthy Towns, Healthy Workplace etc. Healthy Settings are physical and social settings which serve as supportive environments for health protection and health promotion activities. Health Promotion is the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve, their health. It moves beyond a focus on individual behavior towards a wide range of social and environmental interventions.

In short, Health Promotion and Healthy Setting is about empowering people to take matters of health unto their own hands and advocate for healthy life styles personally, in their families and the environment their live and work.

This is a sector wide holistic approach, taking into account other sectors of public services and not limited to the field of health only and view human beings as a complete being physically, mentally, socially and spiritually.

So what would be the future scenario of health care service be like if healthy setting, health promotion and treatment are practiced together at the front line of health service delivery?

Here are some advantages of what the future scenario of health care services be like when people are educated and empowered to take ownership of their own health and the environment their live in,

· People will know how to avoid contracting diseases
· People can identify diseases
· People know the remedies of diseases
· People will know the economical, educational and social consequences of being sick
· Possible eradication of diseases
· Prevention of diseases outbreaks
· Tourist attraction when environment is beautiful and friendly
· Pathway for community development initiatives, example, water and sanitation projects
· Minimizing cost of health care

Health facilities at the front line of care can develop measurable indicators and keep track of disease to see whether these interventions have impact on the outpatient visits and disease patterns. This forms the monitoring and evaluation part of the interventions

Nurses administering health care can develop indicators such as

· Number of people visiting health facility for treatment
· Which disease is the common reason for health facility visit
· The incident rate of diseases
· The prevalence rate of diseases
· Which group of people and from which part of the community frequently come for treatment

Measurements can be done in a quarterly manner at the service level to guide our performance and progress on the matter (interventions). One indirect benefit of such approach is less patients seen if the two interventions proved to be successful. Less patients mean less workload for staff and vital scarce resources can be mobilized in areas of priorities like maternal and child health programs.

All we are dreaming of is a day in the future where people are completely from diseases and infirmities.

I was inspired to share this with you all because it works for people who have the passion to take ownership of their own health and the rewards of being a healthy community is great. Following is the photo essay of South Seas Evangelical Church Health Services in Drekikir District of East Sepik Province, a pilot site and a modern model of healthy village setting.