Where There Is No Doctor 2011
WORKING TOWARD A
BALANCE BETWEEN
A balance between treatment and prevention often comes down to a balance
between immediate needs and long-term needs.
As a health worker you must go to your people, work with them on their terms,
and help them find answers to the needs they feel most. People’s first concern is
often to find relief for the sick and suffering. Therefore, one of your first concerns
must be to help with healing.
But also look ahead. While caring for people’s immediate felt needs, also help
them look to the future. Help them realize that much sickness and suffering can be
prevented and that they themselves can take preventive actions.
But be careful! Sometimes health planners and workers go too far. In their
eagerness to prevent future ills, they may show too little concern for the sickness
and suffering that already exist. By failing to respond to people’s present needs,
they may fail to gain their cooperation. And so they fail in much of their preventive
work as well.
Treatment and prevention go hand in hand. Early treatment often prevents
mild illness from becoming serious. If you help people to recognize many of
their common health problems and to treat them early, in their own homes, much
needless suffering can be prevented.
Early treatment is a form of preventive medicine.
If you want their cooperation, start where your people are. Work toward a
balance between prevention and treatment that is acceptable to them. Such a
balance will be largely determined by people’s present attitudes toward sickness,
healing, and health. As you help them look farther ahead, as their attitudes
change, and as more diseases are controlled, you may find that the balance shifts
naturally in favor of prevention.
You cannot tell the mother whose child is ill that prevention is more important
than cure. Not if you want her to listen. But you can tell her, while you help her care
for her child, that prevention is equally important.
Work toward prevention—do not force it.
Use treatment as a doorway to prevention. One of the best times to talk to
people about prevention is when they come for treatment. For example, if a mother
brings a child with worms, carefully explain to her how to treat him. But also take
time to explain to both the mother and child how the worms are spread and the
different things they can do to prevent this from happening (see Chapter 12). Visit
their home from time to time, not to find fault, but to help the family toward more
effective self-care.
Use treatment as a chance to teach prevention.
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