Reduce Diseases

We are going a little out of order here and skipping to the 6th Millennium Development Goal. But I promise I will come back to Child Mortality.

The reduction of diseases is probably the most obvious one of the goals that relates to public health. The exact wording of the goal is "To Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria, and Other Diseases". 

HIV/AIDS is one of the scariest diseases for people to think about. People often believe that having a positive test for HIV is a death sentence. That is not true.

Now there are some amazing drugs that can really help help slow down the progression of HIV into AIDS and it is believed by some people that if people follow their medication routines perfectly then the progression can be stopped all together. One of the most common drug cocktails that is used right now is called HEART. While these drugs are extremely helpful they can cost about $14,000 a year and if you are living in a developing country and making barely a dollar a day there is no way you can afford to get the treatment you need. If there were a more cost efficient way to combat HIV/AIDS then many more people would be able to survive.

Malaria is an extremely difficult disease to deal with because there is no vaccination and one of the most effective ways to prevent contracting Malaria is by taking a daily medication. I have had to take Malaria medicine twice and I can tell you just how hard it is to remember to take it every day. Especially if you have side effects like I did. Trying to get people to take a daily pill is impossible. The use of bed nets can seriously cut down on the spread of Malaria but if people do not even have real homes then how it a bed net going to help them?That was just a kind of depressing little bit there but Malaria is really hard and I personally can not think of a good way to deal with it. 

It is hard to discuss other diseases because there are so many. There are infectious diseases, chronic diseases, neglected tropical diseases, and diseases that come from parasites. Those are very broad groups that somewhat overlap but gives you a sense of how many diseases there really are. There are so many diseases that not all of them can get the exposure they require. This is an issue because if people don't know about a disease then how are they going to be able to combat this disease? But since it is such a broad topic I will just narrow in on one way to combat these diseases that I have already slightly touched on. 

Vaccinations.

Vaccinations are one of the simplest way to prevent the spread of disease. Smallpox has already been eradicated from the earth due to the vaccination and other diseases are on the way out. But these diseases can not be completely eradicated if vaccines are not being used. My main public health question is why vaccines are not being used every where all the time? I understand that there is a cost and some logistical issues but wouldn't to be easier to give vaccines always and everywhere.

Vaccinations are not really a suitable way to treat HIV/AIDS and Malaria but for most serious communicable diseases there are vaccines. These vaccines are a fairly simple way to really cut down on the world wide disease burden.