Though there are many developments and advancements in this era of globalization, and the world has enabled itself to use the latest technologies to perform various tasks – whether they are related to the production of goods, production of energy, usage of products, or health treatments. Nevertheless, on the other side, many other concerns bother all of us. One major concern that we all are familiar with is global warming, of course. The prediction is that due to high pollution and heat, the ice glaciers will melt, and the sea levels will rise hence creating many other damages to the countries.
Nevertheless, there is another concern that we should worry about; and that is the worsening of health services or hindering in the flourishing of health services in the future. In the future, it is meant by around 20 years or so. The threats that would be faced by health services in the future must be conveyed to the people and relevant organizations to set up some precautionary measures to prevent them. In this paper, we would discuss the main challenges that the health services sector would face, and we will also provide an opinion as to what can be done to manage or prevent them.
The first major challenge is life expectancy. The issue is that life expectancy is getting higher and higher at the time of birth. When life expectancy increases, it means that the person is going to live longer, or he or she would have long age. When this happens, it means that the death rates would be lower, and the people would die later. This would result in an increased population because the birth rates would be constant or high, but the death rates would be lower.
The people would die in their older age and not before; therefore, people would produce more children in their lifetime and hence there would be an increase in the population. The life expectancy at birth in England has increased vary sharply during the first 50 years of the twentieth century (Wanless, 2003). In the early 1900s, the life expectancy for England for women was around 47; and for men, it was 43.
But later in 2001, it increased to a level of 80 for women, and 76 for men. Consequently, the life expectancy cannot be minimized or reduced, but the population can be controlled. People should adopt family planning programs; it means that they should desire lesser children rather than having many children. If each couple has a lower number of children, then obviously it would create a chain effect and the population will not multiply and would be in control.
The issue of Infant mortality is also related to it. It means that the children who are in their early ages like 0 to 1 year die after their birth or within one year after their birth. Of course, it would be because of several reasons; and that would include the low awareness among people for the pregnancy period, delivery time, incubation, feeding of the child, and dieria that is resulted due to the drinking of contaminated water.
In England and Wales, the infant mortality rates have fallen; nevertheless, it is increasing drastically in the deprived areas. Moreover, many other countries are facing this issue; especially those of the African continent. What can be done to avoid this issue is that the countries should be ensured proper availability of clean drinking water and food, making uneducated people aware regarding the birth of children, and the way the children should be fed.
Not only this, but that also happens due to Morbidity, which means the health of the population; it measures the frequency or extent of ill health. Though the population is increasing the health conditions of people is not as good as it was before. They are becoming victims of many diseases. Many countries are facing diseases such as Swine flu, H1N1 virus, Dengue virus, etc. The causes of mortality also include the presence of morbidity (Wanless, 2003).
To assess the overall health status of a population, it is necessary to understand and determine the physical and mental conditions in which people are living. It is because the living conditions can tell us that what are the reasons that are causing mortality and the increase in diseases. To manage this issue, the causes must be diagnosed, and proper measures must be taken to reduce the morbidity rate and improve the living style of people. Moreover, certain doctors must be made available, and medicines must be provided easily to the patients to combat the diseases and prevent them from spreading.
A more common matter is that there is a lack of a multi-sectoral approach. There is a desperate need for training for public health workers in the areas of promoting health, medical information, health assessment, and also risk assessment. Moreover, there is also a need to integrate a surveillance system nationally to care clinical systems that are being developed (Figueras, McKee, Cain, and Lessof, 2004).
To overcome such problems, proper measures must be taken by the governments of the countries such as training and awarding and creating surveillance systems. The basic symptom for the worsening of this issue is the lack of building of the capacity of the public health services in many countries around the globe; moreover, there is a lack of control of disease and maintaining of the health of children and mothers. There is a desperate need to rebuild such healthcare services to meet new challenges that come along with health care (Figueras, McKee, Cain, and Lessof, 2004). Moreover, reforms should motivate the retention of educated, motivated, and talented staff, and boost up the effectiveness of public health care service. If salaries are raised of employees, then the work quality would possibly improve along with the willingness of workers.
The second challenge would be the inequality in the health of people. It could be “in terms of the adoption of equity-oriented policies and the implementation process” (Stahl, Wismar, Ollila, Lahtinen, and Leppo, 2006). Since in many countries, the rich people are getting richer, and poor people are getting poorer; therefore, the gap between the rich and poor would increase and would result in inequality of health conditions. The rich people would have better health than the poorer ones. To avoid this problem, there should be policies that emphasize the interventions made at those who have the worst health. Moreover, certain rules should be made to abide them that would give equality in the treatment criteria and provide healthcare services.
The worsening of the health of workers that are working in respective industries, organizations, or colonies would arise to a devastating level in the next two decades. Those who are well-off may live a good life, but those who are not, might not. Since the competition is increasing and businesses focus on gaining profits and profits; no matter how they gain such profits. To have such profits, they adopt whatever methods of production they have to; no matter those methods harm or deteriorate workers’ health.
To avoid this issue, healthy organization practices must be promoted, and certain precautionary measures must be introduced that keep the workers safe and maintain their health without deteriorating it. Moreover, the private sector for health insurance can play a mixed supplementary and complementary role to public financing and provide people with great access to care in the private sector (Thomson, Foubister, and Mossialos, 2009).
The inequality in health would also rise due to the lack of sustainability in the expenditure over healthcare by the public would also become a concern for all of us. The inflation would increase, the prices would increase, the task to meet the needs would become difficult, and the capacity to spend more would decline. Therefore, the economies would become fiscally unsustainable if the revenue of the public would become inadequate to meet the expenditures. To avoid this issue, the revenues of the public should be increased so that they can spend on healthcare easily, and “the capacity of the health system to convert resources into value” must be improved (Thomson, Foubister, and Mossialos, 2009).
Not only this, those countries who are underdeveloped or lower developed, would also face the worsening and inequality of health due to food shortages. It has been predicted that in the future, the world would face shortages of food and water. Famines would be there in many countries and people would have very little to eat and people would face difficulty in surviving.
The population would be increasing at multiple rates but the means of production and the resources to survive would not increase at that rate; therefore, there would be a discrepancy between the population and the means for survival. Consequently, people would starve and their health would be worsened, and they would die eventually. Nevertheless, the methodology of evaluation of public health evidence should be taken into measure and improved, so that the government used sophisticated measures to make decisions regarding public health (Wanless, 2003).
Though there are many developments and advancements in this era of globalization, and the world has enabled itself to use the latest technologies to perform various tasks – whether they are related to the production of goods, production of energy, usage of products, or health treatments. After discussing all these issues, we come to know that many problems would come along in the way of people who would be living in those two decades.
These problems are not considered these days, but they should be. It is because if people want to avoid or prevent themselves or their upcoming children, they must ensure the implementation of proper measures that put the future people on the safe side by avoiding the pitfalls of healthcare issues. These issues must be made aware and raised on such platforms that would encourage the governments and other organizations to promote such awareness, develop the think tank for the measures, and implement them.
Bibliography
Figueras. J, McKee.M, Cin, Jennifer, and Lessof.S. 2004. Health Systems in Transition: learning from experience.
Stahi.T. Wismer.M, Ollila.E. Lahtinen.E. and Leppo.K. 2006. Health in All Policies: Prospects and Potentials.
Thomson. S., Foubister.T. and Mossialos.E. 2009. Financing Health Care in the European Union. Challenges and Policy Responses.
Wanless. D. 2003. Securing Good health for the whole population. Population Health Trends.