Medicine and Public Health Essay Example

of the identified world killer diseases like HIV/AIDS, waterborne disease, diabetes, tuberculosis and malaria. Environmental conservation should also be promoted.

By definition, public health is an art and science applied in the prevention of diseases. It involves prolonging life and also promotion of health mainly by an organized efforts and proper choices of the society, both private and public organizations and individuals. It is concerned to health threats that may affect certain population irrespective of its size. Epidemiology on the other hand is the study of various pattern, causes and health effects of diseases and conditions on a defined population. Epidemiologists assist public health professionals in the study design, data analysis and assembling results and its dissemination.

Public health sector has great achievements preferably considered as milestone. One of the milestones is the control of infectious diseases. Deaths resulting from infectious diseases have drastically dropped not only in the United States but worldwide; this has resulted to the reduction of infant mortality rates and an increase of life expectancy. Initially, the leading causes of death were pneumonia, tuberculosis, diarrhea and enteritis. Of all the total deaths, majority were children aged less than five years while heart diseases and cancer accounted for major deaths in adults. This milestone was achieved in the 20th century by a discovery which stated that microorganisms were the cause of many diseases.

Another milestone was the imitation of vaccination universally. This has helped in the elimination of communicable diseases like small pox, diphtheria, measles and pertussis. A lot of vaccines have been developed against twenty one diseases worldwide improving the general quality of life. Some of these vaccines though are recommended for use in

populations highly at risk due to their geographical location, age, risk conditions and general medical conditions. Remarkable decline in the morbidity rates has been reported worldwide for nine infections whose vaccines were licensed some years back. Despite the great decline of vaccine preventable diseases, some still occur especially in the developing countries of Africa.