Village health workers’ role in primary prevention of diseases

plumeria (frangipani)

Villagers in many developing countries rarely see doctors or nurses. In fact, a fraction of medical graduates and nurses of English speaking parts of Africa or southern Asia, often emigrate to wealthy countries (Canada, USA, UK and Australia) as they are attracted by better pay and working conditions. Those doctors who, instead, remain in their home country tend to stay in the cities and not in rural areas.  Similarly, nurses are rarely tempted by rural villages. Doctors and nurses, however, are not necessary to improve rural health in developing countries. Two very successful programs in desperately poor parts of India’s Maharashtra State which were described in an interesting report appeared in the New York Times show that people with no or little formal medical training do successfully substitute for doctors and nurses. Once properly trained, these ordinary women and men help prevent most rural sickness by teaching people very simple acts such as the use of clean water, waste-disposal systems and more diverse farming. As a matter of fact, village health workers do have a huge impact on the health and prosperity of the community they serve. They visit pregnant women repeatedly, attend births, teach mothers about how to keep their babies healthy and check in on the children often.  They teach new mothers how to feed and care for their babies and how to treat diarrhea and fever. Children get regular immunizations, and tuberculosis,  scabies and leprosy are properly and effectively prevented. The main role of these health rural workers is teaching the community some essential preventive measures. Their potential role also in the prevention of HIV infection and cancer of the cervix uteri in young women should be properly and adequately stressed. They can really induce a major behavioral change in sex habits of the population by means of interpersonal communication activities. Health workers should be trained on this topic too and prevention of tumors should become a novel goal of these programs.