Despite many decades of independent planning and implementation, most populations living. Within the developing world has yet to succeed in the utopian ideal of health for all. This editorial critically considers the problems and therefore the situation in India to suggest alternatives.
The survival of the physical body is best explained by the materialist explanation. Locates the variation in health and longevity to tangible resources. The reciprocal relationship between poverty and disease had long been acknowledged by public health reformers2 who advocated social reform on political. Economic, humanitarian, and scientific grounds.
Successive governments in India
Successive governments in India have come up with many schemes for the supply of safe water. Sanitation, nutrition, vaccination coverage, education, and employment. Despite the various attempts, many people don’t have access to those basic needs. Malnutrition is rampant in children, and vaccination coverage is insufficient among the poor. Education is substandard5 and unemployment widespread in rural areas. Despite increased budgetary support for such schemes, most states have pursued weak policies during this area and neglected the local governments. It is giving them a coffee stake in improving infrastructure. The enormity of the unfinished tasks is mind‐boggling.
The context of public health within the developing world differs markedly from the social. Economic, and political environments within the West when public health became a part of their culture and a basic standard of life.
The antibiotic era: The Western world completed its public health revolutions before the introduction of antibiotics and eliminated epidemics of infectious diseases through public health measures. The role of antibiotics within the prevention of diseases in populations is negligible, and that they worsen things by providing temporary relief to the suffering and permit the underlying causes for the epidemic to travel untreated. The cycle and politics of cholera is an apt example.
The illusions of curative medicine
The illusions of curative medicine: there’s evidence that rates of tuberculosis within the West dropped long. Before the introduction of medicine for tuberculosis. The supply of adequate housing, the reduction of overcrowding, and improved nutrition were the explanations for winning this war within the Western world. Sole reliance on the present curative approaches (eg DOTS (directly observed treatment, short-course)). To problems that need long‐term public health solutions. It will prove ineffective with the unchecked spread of infection.
The pharmaceutical industry challenge: The pharmaceutical industry profits from disease and unhealthiness. the simple concept of the oral rehydration solution, easily available in each household. The sale of the oral rehydration solution by the industry disempowered the population in managing diarrhea using techniques easily available in every home.
The medicalization of public health
Vaccinations as a panacea: The elimination of smallpox through vaccination was an impressive example of disease prevention. However, not all infections follow similar patterns. The recent resurgence of polio in India is proof of this.8 The eradication of polio will surely also involve the supply of safe water and sanitation so as to stop the spread of the virus. Similarly, the work on rotavirus, Haemophilus influenza B, and other vaccines being administered in India plays into the hands of the pharmaceutical industry and takes faraway from the task of providing basic public health needs for the community.
The medicalization of public health: Many inputs—engineering, politics. Economic, educational, and nonsecular, additionally to medical—were a part of the trouble within the West. The social control program in India is an example. The program features a solitary focus. One solution that is, women’s fertility and sterilization. It doesn’t examine the complex interaction9 between livelihoods. Social Security, education, employment, and infant deathrate, but continues to look at sterilization of girls because the only target.
Public health scene in India
The different context of the general public health scene in India has resulted in errors within the approach and includes:
Using urgency‐driven curative medical solutions rather than long‐term public health policies: Unsafe water and poor sanitation are such facts of life for the bulk of Indians that they rarely inherit consciousness. However, every epidemic of a communicable disease makes newspapers and tv headlines. the govt response is swift and curative. Alas, the media quickly moves on to subsequent crises and therefore the need for permanent public health solutions is forgotten. This is often also true for the connection between tuberculosis and housing or deaths thanks to starvation or chronic malnutrition and poor nutrition.
