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ISSN: 2574 -1241
ISSN: 2574 -1241
Received: September 12, 2022; Published: September 21, 2022
*Corresponding author: Twara Aashish, Fellow Physician, Integrative/Complementary Medicine, Homoeopathy, Homeopathy One, Ahmedabad, India
DOI: 10.26717/BJSTR.2022.46.007333
Despite all the development and research in the field of medicine, covid 19 took us in a swirl and stagnated the whole world. Every now and then a totally new organism or a mutated version starts affecting the human population. All resulting in substantial morbidity and mortality while spreading across borders to infect people in multiple countries.
New viruses emerging with lightning speed and infecting humans, as the human system is made terribly weak by our actions and choices.
• 2003 – the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS) outbreak,
• 2009 – the swine flu pandemic,
• 2012 – Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS) outbreak,
• 2013–2016 – Ebola virus disease epidemic in West Africa,
• 2015 – Zika virus disease epidemic,
• 2019–2022 – Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak following in its various variants.
• 2022 – Monkey Pox, scientists in the process of renaming the virus. [1] and
• Now August 4, 2022, Langya henipavirus (LayV) which was described in the New England Journal of Medicine [2].
“These sorts of zoonotic spill over events happen all the time, The world needs to wake up.” – Holmes.
“Climate change will lead to many new virus outbreaks creating healthcare emergencies far quicker than before [3].)”
Healthcare is about being healthy and not falling sick in the first place. Evidently, we all have genetic system which is partly inherited and partly unique and is constantly being framed as we go through our life by exposures and experiences. The lesson learnt from these recent developments is a very clear one. We need to change our perspective from sick care to healthcare. Health is not merely absence of disease but a state of balance of mind body social and environmental interaction. Our health is our responsibility. Together we can build better by understanding, analyzing, and taking corrective actions.
We can
• Improve your basic health level this can be done by healthy lifestyle choices.
• Focus on strengthening your system.
• Reduce your susceptibility – if you are suffering from photodermatitis reducing your susceptibility allows you to live life like an average person without being affected by the sunrays.
• Avoid suppressions in all forms – physical, emotional, social, medicinal – conventional and complementary both.
• Treat the root causes when present – many people suffer from renal stones – removal of stone is just one part but to correct the functioning of Urinary system is treating root cause.
For a primary care physician, knowing what to use, when to use (in which situation), how much to use and when not to use, is the urgent necessity in today’s scenario. I do not believe that it is the smallness of our knowledge, but only the faulty application of it, that hinders us from approaching, in medical science, nearer to certainty and simplicity. Cause if we apply our knowledge in proper direction, we can be prepared with all our tools in the event of an anticipated epidemic or pandemic of an inevitable disease X. Underlying is the figure of Epidemiological Triad which tells us that the disease is the result of the interaction between Host that is Human, Environment that is surroundings and Agent/ Pathogen that is the micro-organisms (Figure 1). Our interventions at the level of agents have resulted into antimicrobial resistance (microbes modify and hence the previously useful medication has no effect on them) which is one of the top 10 global public health threat as per WHO.
Figure 1: The figure also lists the characteristics and the interventions utilized to reduce the disease.
How could we forget that the supreme task of any living organism is to preserve life. So, if we kill bacteria they mutate and try to survive from our medical attacks. Our focus on environment and agent has become an obsession to such an extent that the focus on host is side-lined. This was one of the major reasons for a new organism being able to shake the whole health care systems of the world. As the focus has always been on the causative agent and least on the host. It is high time that we develop an encompassing primary health care that has dual benefits. The one that strengthens the human system while curing it and simultaneously reduces the susceptibility of the individual preventing future illnesses. After all Prevention is better than cure. Understanding our own health is a key factor which is the pivotal role that a patient plays in healthcare delivery service. Often patients wait too long to consult that very little can be done for them and there are others who pop a pill for every minute thing which is not necessary. We need to know, ask, and check. Patient awareness and education is very important. You should know what to do and when to do. And if you have queries you can always reach out to your healthcare provider, who must always work in your best interest, irrespective of their personal opinions about other systems of treatments. Do not self-medicate with anything, not even safe natural or alternative medications/ products. Your self-medication only burdens your healthcare provider’s task.
The future Healthcare envisioned defining patient care – the one that focuses on primary care and strengthening the human system. The complex human system needs to be given priority in healthcare and not just the causative organisms. All our research and developments look nothing sort of an achievement when we are faced with a new emerging disease. Can there not be a solution ready that can be applied while we figure out better means and ways? There is but one – that relies solely on the symptoms presented by the patient. A method of treatment where the prescription is not based on the name of disease nor on the causative organism. A new emerging disease of which we know nothing more than the symptoms provided by the patient (infected person) can be tackled very well by Homeopathy [4,5] while we try and find out and name the new organism, its latent phase, pathophysiology of the emerging new disease, it’s mode of communication, etc. This way we can be prepared to better handle the initial attacks of the inevitable new emerging diseases and reduce the morbidity and mortality.
But that the powers given by nature to man and habit will triumph over all variations of climate, to the preservation of life and health, is proved by there being inhabitants in the island of Terra del Fuego, as well as on the banks of the Ganges, in Lapland, as well as Ethiopia, in the seventieth 8 well as the third degree of latitude.
A deeply rooted scurvy can often be cured by the united action of warm clothing, dry country air, moderate exercise, change of the old-salted meat for that freshly killed, along with sour-croute, cresses, and such like vegetables, and brisk beer for drink. What would be the use of medicine in such a case? To mask the good effects produced by the change of diet! Scurvy is produced by a system of diet opposite to this; therefore, it may be cured by a dietetic course—the reverse of that which produced it; at any rate, we may wait to see the result of this method before we begin with our medicines. Why should we render the syphilitic patient, for example, worse than he is by a change of diet, generally of a debilitating nature? We cannot cure him by any system of diet, for his disease is not produced by any errors of the sort. Why then, should we, in this case, make any change?
Hippocrates, himself, if I recollect right, hints at something similar in his aphorisms, when he says, that medicine and the vis naturae produce much more considerable and profound changes in diseases than any small irregularity in diet. It is more marked and powerful compared to the role of changing diet unless the disease is a direct consequence of dietary error [6]. Medication harm accounts for 50% of the overall preventable harm in medical care. US$ 42 billion of global total health expenditure worldwide can be avoided if medication errors are prevented.
Medicines: Here the question arises, Is it well to mingle many kinds of medicines together in one prescription; to order baths, clysters, venesections, blisters, fomentations and inunctions all at once, or one after the other in rapid succession, if we wish to bring the science of medicine to perfection, to make cures, and to ascertain for certain in every case what effect the medicines employed produced, in order to be able to use them with like, or even greater success in similar causes ? I have no hesitation in asserting that whenever two medicines are mingled together, they almost never produce each its own action on the system, but one almost always different from the action of both separatelyan intermediate action, a neutral action, if I may be allowed to borrow the expression from chemical language. The more complex our receipts, the more obscure will it be in medicine. A learned Physician, Scientist, Brilliant chemist, a linguist and a translator, philologist, expert medical jurist and a practical toxicologist, and a great reformer, shares his observations on polypharmacy and its consequences in 1797 [7]. Now 225 years later, on the world patient safety day, we acknowledge the idea as one of the key action areas for patient safety. These include high-risk situations, transitions of care, polypharmacy (concurrent use of multiple medications) and look-alike, sound-alike medications [8] Figure 2. Dare I confess, that for many years I have never prescribed anything but a single medicine at once, and have never repeated the dose until the action of the former one had ceased; A venešection alone-a purgative alone and always a simple, never a compound remedy, and never a second until I had got a clear notion of the operation of the first? Dare I confess, that, in this manner, I have been very successful, and given satisfaction to my patients, and seen things which otherwise I never would have seen? Monopharmacy can be utilized with success is what the underlying stanza states.
Figure 2.
Abstract
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