Health Hygiene & Sanitation

Lesson 04 : Determinants Of Health

Health Services

Provision of health services will affect the health status. Health and family welfare services cover a wide spectrum of personal and community services for treatment of disease, prevention of illness and promotion of health. The purpose of health services is to improve the health status of population.

Services Provided Include

1. Immunization- influences the avoidance of a group of disease
2. Provision of safe water-prevents mortality and morbidity from water borne diseases
3. Care of pregnant women and lactating mothers-helps to improve health of future generation and reduces maternal mortality and morbidity.
4. Care of infants, preschool children and adolescent girls - results in reduction of IMR, child mortality and morbidity in addition to improvement in health of future mothers.

The health services must reach the social periphery, equally distributed and accessible at affordable cost and most importantly they must be socially acceptable.

Health services are a part of social and economic development. Provision of health care services, of course, does not ensure good health. No matter how the health services are, they are considered pertinent only if they improve the health.

Providing health and nutrition education will facilitate people to seek help with nutritional problems. The nature of health services is also important, whether curative or preventive.

One of the problems of health services is that they are often underutilized by the people who need them most. Community based services are more accessible than hospital based, to increase utilization of these services

E.g.;

1. Facility of mobile clinic can be best utilized by the working women.
2. Facilities of emerging ambulance services provide quick and life saving services to the public.