Health Information in Developing Countries

Subject: Healthcare Institution
Pages: 2
Words: 384
Reading time:
2 min

Information traditionally obtained from health facilities serves to assist in the health care system in developing nations. However, this data is not fully useful as it is fragmentary and biased. “The health care challenges facing developing countries are many in number, broad in scope and fundamental in nature.” Several factors influence the health care system: accessibility, notions, and attitudes of the population, cultural background, availability of modern facilities, the prevalence of illnesses, presence of vectors, gender disparity, per capita income, and traditional medicine. The health data may not actually represent the picture in its totality. The demographic picture and the health surveillance system are what have helped the developed countries reach their good standards of healthcare. How the developing nations need to perform this surveillance has to be adopted from the principles applied in international health.

Innovations have to be made in the policy-making, planning, and implementation of health services and allocation of available resources for health implementation. The methods of overcoming the local factors may be understood from the information from international health. The burden of disease in developing countries is so huge that a speedy understanding of a health care situation has become necessary. “Assessments of mortality, analysis of capacity strengthening, technical support for field sites, reproductive health assessments, presence of vector-borne diseases,” evidence-based information from journals and information from the WHO on health issues and solutions could help the developing countries in managing their health issues. Neglected diseases have afflicted more than one billion of the world’s population found in war-ravaged or conflict zones, rural and remote areas going hand-in-hand with poverty as indicated by the WHO. They are concentrated in the developing nations where safe water accessibility and appropriate sanitation do not exist; the situation is worsened due to the absence of basic levels of health care.

Developed nations have become free of neglected diseases due to their safe water access and proper sanitation; they achieved higher than a basic level of health care in their implementation of health care services. The developed nations have advanced in information and communication technologies. This has not been taken up by developing countries in real earnest. Communication technologies and the Internet facility must be harnessed to maximum benefits to the healthcare delivery system.