With the advent of new diseases and epidemics amid growing rampant social and economic inequality that hinders access to healthcare, the world continues to face a plethora of challenges in managing the healthcare crises. Various diseases like malaria and HIV/AIDS in the underdeveloped countries, the new COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the swiftly increasing rates of mental illnesses pose real challenges to the attempts to tackle the already existent medical care upheaval. The uncontrolled spread of waves of the COVID-19 epidemic has launched a new chain of subsequent physical diseases, as well as substantial mental health issues. As the global spread is evolving, there is a serious threat to global peace and well-being.
Tackling the COVID-19 pandemic and its subsequent medical challenges poses a social problem within the large-scale medical care crisis. Different infections, such as MERS or Tuberculosis, as well as COVID-19, have a negative effect on human physical health long-term and are accompanied by serious mental challenges, such as depression, anxiety, and stress. (Abbas, 2021). Specific issues that require attention are the inability of the global health care system to provide everyone with the vaccines and restricted access to professional medical care that is dependent on the state regulations and level of income. This means that the number of vaccines is limited, which implies that not everyone will be able to get them. The ways that these diseases are managed by the healthcare systems across the board, such as quarantine and social distancing measures, result in the deteriorated mental health state of the patients (Abbas, 2021). Amid the pandemic crisis, there is a palpable lack of solutions undertaken by the global healthcare systems that would address the issue multidimensionally. It should be noted that the imperfection of the healthcare system itself is an explanation of why this problem is so urgent.
The theoretical framework of the study includes available data on the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on human health and the shortcomings of the health care system. In order to understand the processes that underlie the aforementioned contradictions caused by the spread of infectious diseases and, such sociological framework a conflict perspective can be applied. This perspective aims to identify the ways in which the government and corporations impact healthcare policies and how it ultimately shapes the solution methods (Mooney et al., 2022). Accordingly, in the presentation itself, it will be indicated as what includes the industrial complex of healthcare. After that, it will be necessary to consider ways that they are lobbying the political system that ultimately shapes and announces the healthcare policy (Mooney et al., 2022). As the medical industries profit off certain medical conditions, they frequently place profit over the actual population’s well-being, as their functioning is conditioned upon the continuation of medical problems, which should also be indicated.
Dealing with the global pandemics and their aftermaths within the general physical and mental health of people should be put into the epicenter of the healthcare crisis analysis that the world is faced with today. Despite the world coming up with vaccines and various pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical ways to combat mental health issues, the overall result of containing the spread of the virus, as well as helping people maintain their psychological well-being, is questionable. This is why it is important to study this social problem through a multi-faceted lens that would allow eliciting the deeper underpinnings of the social processes under consideration. Those could be the involvement or inconspicuous inter-connections to other social sectors, such as the government and the economy. This can be implemented within the sociological framework of the conflict perspective.
References
Abbas, J. (2021). Crisis management, transnational healthcare challenges and opportunities: The intersection of COVID-19 pandemic and global mental health. Research in Globalization, 3(1), 1-7. Web.
Mooney, L., Clever, M., & Willigen, M. (2022). Understanding social problems (11th ed.). Cengage Learning.