10-19-2011, 12:56 PM
The traditional model of health care--repair health problems after they have happened--is too expensive. Prevention is much cheaper. It has long been known that poor countries cannot afford to build a physician-based infrastructure in the foreseeable future; but they can make dramatic improvements in public health. Those techniques are now being applied to countries that can or already have physician-based infrastructure but which have also found savings by adopting preventative measures.
The biggest killers of the twentieth century--TB (especially), cholera, typhoid, typhus, malaria--were banished long before effective treatments were created, largely by eliminating the worst of the urban slums and rural swamps. Heart disease and diabetes can be addressed in similar ways by changes in diet and exercise, although, since both have a metabolic component, it may be possible only to delay rather than deny them. Cancer is more problematic since many cancers are idiopathic.
The biggest killers of the twentieth century--TB (especially), cholera, typhoid, typhus, malaria--were banished long before effective treatments were created, largely by eliminating the worst of the urban slums and rural swamps. Heart disease and diabetes can be addressed in similar ways by changes in diet and exercise, although, since both have a metabolic component, it may be possible only to delay rather than deny them. Cancer is more problematic since many cancers are idiopathic.