Family health cannot be improved unless we start by educating the mothers in all the families.
Who is responsible for the family health? When the women at home are exposed to health education, the entire family gets long term health benefit. It is woman who conceives and gives birth to either low-birth-weight babies or healthy babies.
They rear and develop babies properly or neglect them; they choose suitable or unsuitable food items, process them properly or damage them unwittingly. When the children, husband and the elderly fall ill, they render first aid. They also create psychological situations in the family to reduce tension or increase the same, which affect the mind and heart leading to risky heart attack or to peace and happiness.
Despite all these known relationships of role of women on health, we have done precious little to educate women. In fact, they should be the first and main beneficiaries of health education for improvement of family health.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
Though health education is key to improving the quality of life of most of the population, it has not been given the priority it deserves in most developing countries. The need for health education applies equally to all-whether, literate or not, working or not, business executive, political leadership, professional organisation, etc. We know that it is the most affluent that suffer generally from diseases like cardiac problems, cancer, diabetes, evils of smoking, drug addiction, AIDS, etc.
Both developed countries and some cross sections of developing countries suffer from the above problems. Recently, when jaundice epidemic spread in Tirupati town during the late 1980s, many of the members of the teaching community became major victims, clearly demonstrating that even the highly educated are not equally educated on simple health matters. Some of the elementary principles of disease prevention are not known even to the educated people, not to speak of the general population.
At the same time, infant mortality in China has been drastically reduced to 32 per 1000 live births largely through health education in rural areas, by compulsorily making people drink boiled water and correct infant feeding practices. A similar healthy practice of taking boiled cumin seed water is universally practiced in Kerala state, and this should also have had an impact on reducing infant and child mortality in that state.
Of course, improvement in environmental sanitation and personal hygiene have also contributed to better child survival rates in China, Kerala, Sri Lanka, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Thailand. Health education as we learn now has helped in reducing the incidence of cigarette smoking in developed countries.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
Experts now recommend that health education is one of the most powerful and practical way to reduce the spread of AIDS. People in all developing and developed countries are, therefore, in need of health education.