American Board of Preventive Medicine defines ‘Preventive Medicine’ as follows:
“Preventive Medicine is the specialty of medical practice that focuses on the health of individuals, communities, and defined populations. Its goal is to protect, promote, and maintain health and well-being and to prevent disease, disability and death.”
The most basic examples of preventive medicines are known to be hand washing, breast feeding and immunization.
Simple preventive measures, such as, increasing awareness against tobacco smoking, misuse of alcohol or unprotected sex, especially in an emerging economy like India, will go a long way to prevent and control such habit related diseases, help saving significant expenditure of the nation towards healthcare.
The purpose:
The primary purpose of preventive medicines could well have dual objectives as follows:
- Disease prevention of a large section of the population
- Reduce the healthcare expenses
Primary, secondary and tertiary prevention:
As stated above, primary disease prevention usually would include vaccination against specific disease types, whereas secondary and tertiary prevention are usually done through early detection process and screening of the target population.
Relevance to chronic diseases:
A World Health Organization (WHO) report, titled, “Preventing Chronic diseases – a vital investment” argues that globally of the 58 million deaths in 2005, approximately 35 million were due to chronic diseases, which were expected to increase by 17% in the next 10 years thereafter.
It points out that 80% of all premature heart disease, stroke and diabetes are preventable. This assumes greater significance as 80% deaths due to chronic disease occur in low and middle income nations where most of the world population lives, against only 20% of the same in the high income countries.
The report, therefore, articulates that it is absolutely necessary for the countries to review and implement a comprehensive and integrated preventive public health strategy.
Regular preventive measures:
Experts recommend following regular preventive measures, which are very relevant to India:
- Counseling on hygienic life style
- Routine primary vaccinations
- Counseling on quitting smoking, alcohol misuse, protected sex, losing weight, eating healthy food, treating depression etc.
- Regular general health check-up
- Cancer screenings like mammograms and colonoscopies
Immense potential in India:
In a country like India, with high prevalence of many preventable diseases involving a large section of the nation’s population, preventive medicine promises immense potential to reduce the healthcare expenditure of the country significantly and at the same time would promise a much better quality of life to its population.
A counter point:
Another school of thought, primarily US based, advocates that preventive medicines, on the contrary, would raise the healthcare expenditure.
- Preventive Medicine increases healthcare cost:
In support of this contrarian view, a paper published in ‘The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM)’ on February 14, 2008 based on 599 studies between 2000 and 2005 infers that though disease prevention in some cases may reduce the cost of healthcare, more preventive medicines in many cases could, in fact, increase the overall healthcare expenditure.
- Screening cost is more than savings:
It says that screening cost of a disease for a large section of the population may far exceed the savings from treatment avoidance in those cases where only a small part of the population would have become ill in the absence of preventive measures.
- Treatment with medicine offers greater value:
The article also points out that:
“The drugs used to treat high cholesterol yield much greater value for the money, if the targeted population is at high risk for coronary heart disease, and the efficiency of cancer screening can depend heavily on both the frequency of the screening and the level of cancer risk in the screened population.”
- Preventive medicine more expensive:
The authors argue that preventive medicine will be more expensive where to make a small populations free from a particular disease, preventive measures are taken involving a large population, most of whom even otherwise would not have suffered from that illness.
Conclusion:
Coming back to the WHO report which categorically says, contrary to the belief of some section of the society, especially in the USA that measures for control and prevention of chronic diseases are really not too expensive for any nation, not even for the low and middle income countries.
In reality, even chronic diseases can be prevented and effectively controlled to reduce the disease burden of any country very significantly. The WHO article also says that expensive patented medicines are no longer required for prevention of, for example, even cardiac ailments. The cheaper generic drugs, if used along with counseling on life style changes, will be quite affordable to a vast majority of population even in the middle and low income countries.
Weighing all pros and cons, WHO aims to reduce the death rates from all chronic diseases by 2% per year through preventive medicines, which would mean prevention of 36 million deaths due to chronic disease by 2015, mostly in the low and middle income countries.
These statistics will more than vindicate the argument that preventive measures and medicines are cost effective, in the long run for any nation, particularly for a country like India.
By: Tapan J Ray
Disclaimer: The views/opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own, written in my individual and personal capacity. I do not represent any other person or organization for this opinion.