By: Valerie Fitton-Kane
When you go to the doctor for a check-up, do you go just to get your blood pressure checked? Probably not. More than likely, your doctor checks your blood pressure, listens to your heart, takes a blood sample, and asks you lots of questions about your physical and mental symptoms. You talk to him or her about that funny rash you had last week, and you ask for a refill on your birth control or allergy medication. This is integrated healthcare. Our doctors never just test for or treat one disease when they see you. They test you for anything and everything … and they cover off contraception and other preventative care while they’re at it.
Meanwhile, our public health experts and government officials are providing all sorts of services that, while we don’t often think of them in terms of health, they do help to keep us healthy. For example, they ensure clean, uncontaminated water comes out of your kitchen faucet every morning. And they’re helping to drill it into your head that you need to wash your hands when you finish in the bathroom … and darn it, you better wash them correctly.
In developing countries, there aren’t always doctors and nurses, public health experts, or strong governments to provide all of these services. Quite often, there are non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that specialize in delivering a few key services such as the treatment of eye diseases or the building of wells to provide clean water. Some organizations, such as CARE or Save the Children, have expanded to provide a range of different services, but quite often it takes many government and non-government groups with various specialties to deliver all the services that you and I are used to. And even then, service delivery is often pretty uneven because most of the organizations that deliver these services have to ask for donations from people like us in order to pay for the work they do.