Social Issues In Health Assignment

This essay is going to explore how effective it has been reducing inequalities in health in the UK and whether the National Health Service (NHS) has been successful. It will also explore three milestones that have happened since the NHS was commenced and the impact these have made. There are many different approaches on how to define health.Social Issues In Health Assignment

For example; The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines health by stating, health is a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease (WHO, 2018). Whereas the Biomedical model believes that health is the absence of disease and infirmity. The biomedical model only focuses on the biological factors in health. This model believes that good health is the freedom from pain, disease and defect. It doesn’t take into consideration the social or psychological factors that may have a role in a persons illness. As the biomedical model implies health in a clinical approach, it doesn’t challenge causes such as mental health which may lead to inequalities. WHO takes into consideration all three physical, mental and social wellbeing of a person, meaning all three need to be well for person to have good health.Social Issues In Health Assignment

In 1941 the government requested a report on how Britain could be rebuilt after the second world war. In 1942 a man called William Beveridge published this report known as the ‘1942 Beveridge report’. This report had Beveridge’s ideas to set up the NHS in 1948 and to make healthcare free for all. In the report, it also included how Britain needed to get rid of the five giant evils. The five giant evils were; Want, Ignorance, Squalor, disease and Idleness. In 1945 a man called Aneurin Bevan was selected as the minister of health, his main responsibility was to establish the NHS. On the 5th July 1948 the government took over and the NHS was begun, with free diagnosis and treatment for all. Since the NHS first began there has been some big milestones such as; In vitro fertilisation (IVF) – IVF was brought into place to help couples who have fertility problems or were struggling to conceive naturally. IVF is when an egg is removed from a woman’s ovary and then fertilised in a laboratory with her partners or a donors sperm. Once the egg has been fertilised, it is them transferred to the woman’s womb to grow and develop.

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Organ transplants – You can now have organ transplants on the NHS such as a heart transplant. A heart transplant is an operation to substitute a failing heart with a healthy heart from a donor who has recently deceased. This then gives the patient a longer life expectancy than they would of originally had. Diagnostic equipment – There is now equipment such as computerised tomography (CT) scanners, which produces detailed images of inside the body. CT scanners can be used to help guide further tests and treatment and also diagnose and monitor conditions. Milestones like these three shows how much the NHS has developed since it was first set up. Without equipment such as CT scanners, healthcare professionals wouldn’t be as advanced as they are today at diagnosing patients and resolving the issue as quick as they can. Without organ transplants the patients with failing hearts would have a much shorter life expectancy. Research is always ongoing which shows there will be many more milestones yet to come for the NHS.Social Issues In Health Assignment

There can be social and cultural factors that can lead to inequalities in health. Causes of this come from problems such as unequal funding of healthcare services in communities and the postcode lottery. The postcode lottery determines whether a patient can have access to certain treatments based on where they live. An example of the postcode lottery is for patients in Scotland who require IVF, they are allowed to receive three full treatments on the NHS. Patients who live in Wales can only receive two treatments and patients in Ireland can only receive one. This itself is causing inequalities in health as based on a patients geographical location, determines how many treatments they are allowed to receive.

From what has been discussed previously, it suggests that the NHS has more than achieved what was set out for the organisation in 1948. Although there are still some problems such as the postcode lottery, which gives unequal access to patients. The medical equipment and treatment is now much more advanced than what it was, meaning the life expectancy of the public in Britain is now higher. Overall this shows how much of a success the NHS has been and how it will continue to grow.Social Issues In Health Assignment