Preventive Care is Really Effective for a Healthy Population

Canadian researchers have concluded that the best way to prolong the lives of individuals within a society is to spend on social services. Traditionally, governments spend on health care to improve the health of individuals, but the problem is that the health system is reactive. The health system is really good at healing people, however, it doesn’t preventive problems from happening in the first place. If societies focused on spending on programs that help people stay healthy then their money can go a lot further to helping people.

“More social spending was associated with a more positive outcome. Life expectancy went up and potentially avoidable mortality went down,” Dutton said in an interview. “Places where social spending didn’t keep up with health spending missed out on those gains.”

“If governments spent one cent more on social services per dollar spent on health by rearranging money between the two portfolios, life expectancy could have experienced an additional 5-per-cent increase and potentially avoidable mortality could have experienced an additional 3-per-cent decrease in one year,” Dutton said.

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Pets Can Improve Patient Care

Having pets around is already a pretty fun idea, and now it can also be healthy idea! It’s known that pets can help kids by lowering the chances of them developing allergies, particularly if the pets are allowed outdoors (be careful with letting cats outside though since they kill millions of birds needlessly). Now research is pointing out that patient care can improve when patients happen to have a pet.

A dog or a cat is always there and no matter how big a jerk you’ve been during the day, your dog or cat will always love you when you come home,” he said, adding pets often alleviate loneliness and offer companionship, especially for elderly people.
Monavvari said knowing more about that bond opens up all kinds of possibilities for human health professionals.
“For some people, their pet is the most important family member for them and we were missing that piece altogether. We didn’t know what to ask or if it is appropriate to ask and what information that provides,” he told CBC News.
Patients love to talk about their pets, said Monavvari, and often that can be the most important bond in their lives. He said patients will sometimes put their pet’s health ahead of their own.

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Cuba Creates Great Doctors

Cuba is a beautiful country filled with nice people. Many of those people are educated doctors who go around the world saving lives for free, and they do the same at home. Al Jazeera has a nice long piece looking into the quality and motivations behind these great Cuban doctors. Spoiler: it’s not about money, it’s about helping people.

Cuba has sent about 185,000 health workers to more than 100 countries since the 1960s. Medical staff have been deployed to some of the world’s worst natural disasters, such as the catastrophic 2004 tsunami in Asia and the deadly earthquake in Pakistan in 2005.

Last year as Ebola ravaged West Africa, Cuba sent hundreds of doctors and nursesto hot zones in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea – more than any other country.

“They are always the first to arrive and the last to leave,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said of Cuban medical deployments. “They remain in place after the crises. Cuba can be proud of its healthcare system, a model for many countries.”

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