Challenges for Healthcare in 21st Century: How Child Medicine Can Help?

 

Children are the world's future pillars. Every nation on the planet ought to prioritize child health in the main. Through the provision of high-quality clinical services, enhancement of education, training, and research, as well as their crucial role in strengthening primary health care in every nation and striving for universal health care coverage, child doctors can mitigate the challenges that healthcare faces in the 21st century.

The term "primary health care" refers to services that are first contact, continuous, comprehensive, and coordinated to address the individual and family's specific health requirements.

Health supervision and proactive guidance are two components of pediatric primary health care; observing physical and psychosocial development and advancement; screening based on age; treatment and diagnosis of both acute and chronic diseases; management of illness that threatens one's life and, when necessary, referral of more complicated conditions; as well as coordinated management of health issues that necessitate multiple professional services and first-contact care.

The world is tested with numerous serious medical services difficulties. Primary healthcare is the most appropriate response to the world's major healthcare challenges. Ideally, nations that place a greater emphasis on primary care can:

           1. Lower the expense of care without forfeiting the nature of

              care

           2.  Further develop well-being through admittance to more fitting administrations

                 conveyed by persistently invigorated prepared human resources

           3. Diminish the imbalances in their populace's well-being.

 

Primary care is the only way that nations around the world can effectively address the numerous health issues that affect their populations.

Preventing and controlling major communicable diseases, such as the dreaded tuberculosis (TB) and malaria, as well as HIV, rely heavily on primary care.

The only way we will be able to effectively combat and avoid the epidemics of noncommunicable diseases that are also affecting many nations is through primary health care. These epidemics include the rising rates of respiratory diseases, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and cancer as the rates of smoking, obesity, poor nutrition, and inactivity among populations continue to rise.

We will not be able to effectively combat the worldwide epidemic of mental health issues unless primary care is implemented. It is the main way countries will want to successfully deal with the medical care needs of the rising extent of older individuals in a significant number of our networks.

Additionally, an essential consideration is the main way that we will want to diminish the rising medical services costs in all countries, through help for preventive consideration, well-being advancement, and enhancements in persistent illness the board and the administration of co-morbidities. Building more and more hospitals is beyond our means. To keep people out of hospitals, we need strong primary care.

We need a strong system of primary medical care that includes strong child medicine, gynecology/obstetrics, and family medicine, supervised postgraduate training for our medical graduates, and programs of continuing professional development for our primary care workforce if we are to have strong primary care in our nations.

Family-centered pediatric primary care for children and adolescents incorporates sociocultural sensibilities, needs and risk factors, community resources and strengths, and strategies for care delivery into clinical practice. A "medical home," where qualified child health specialists provide or supervise comprehensive, continuously accessible, and cost-effective care, is the ideal setting for pediatric primary health care.

The most appropriate provider of pediatric primary health care is the pediatrician because of their training—which includes four years of medical school and three or more years of intensive training devoted solely to all aspects of child and adolescent medical care—as well as their demonstrated interest in and total professional commitment to child, adolescent, and young adult health care.

Sources

1 J Family Med Prim Care, India 2013 Jul-Sep; 2(3): 211–214

2. November 1993 issue of AAP News and was reaffirmed in September 2010. A 1-word change has been made: “family-oriented” was replaced with “family-centered.”