'"Strengthening health systems means addressing key constraints related to health worker staffing [and] infrastructure."' Joint statement as Brown launches plan to save the world.
Funny that in the 19th century it was the provision of clean water, drains, and sewage systems that is widely recognised as the key factor in increasing life expectancy; no-one ever mentions 'key constraints on health worker staffing' , though the contribution of the navvies in building the tunnels and things is recognized. Bet the navvies never thought of themselves as health workers.
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I think he means there aren't enough nurses and such...
Still, M, if I were choosing between a nurse and a clean water supply etc., and in catastrophic health circumstances ...probably we can all nurse a bit, nothing specialised, but a bit of mutual care? I don't deny doctors or modern medicines, but good results in public health seem to have come from public works and engineers when we were with widespread and basic diseases.
I'm having a frustrating attack of sluggish déjà vu here, HG - didn't we once debate whether mass provision of reasonable basic standards was the only way to deliver public services? (probably discussed in the education context)
Because that's what I reckon, and I think your post reinforces my point
or maybe I am just burbling, it happens a lot these days
(anyway, Confusion on Brown and all his works)
You want me to remember what I have said since last Easter, ND?
Would the claim that it's all of a piece and usually coherent (depending on the thickness of the red mist) and that therefore we probably do think a 'mass provision of reasonable basic standards was the only way to deliver public services' is likely to have been agreed. It certainly is now.
I do remember arguing that, disgusting personally as he is in all his manifold distortions, Brown is but one person and we are not facing one man. They are Legion - where and when is the cliff?
I think Ivan Illich made the same point about other causes of improved health and longevity in Medical Nemesis (1975):
http://www.amazon.com/Medical-Nemesis-Ivan-Illich/dp/0394712455
His work reviewed by Anthony Daniels (aka Theodore Dalrymple):
http://newcriterion.com:81/archive/21/jan03/illich.htm
And from Bill Bonner in Wednesday's Daily Reckoning:
"Strikes are often good for people. A doctors' strike in Scandinavia coincided with a drop in death rates; embarrassed, the doctors decided never to go on strike again."
The belief that going to hospital results in death is as reasonable now as it was in my grandparents' generation too. Fair to say that then a hospital was for serious undertakings whereas now it's death by dirt even for minor procedures.
Also when small there were visits to aunties in convalescent homes, drinking special waters after mysterious operations discussed in whispers; there don't seem to be convalescent homes any more, probably bed blockers work out cheaper.
Religious orders used to do a fair amount of non-specialised general nursing and medical work too. Perhaps they could all be revivified and come back into service. There are people who wish to serve the sick as a vocation. By analogy, I've wondered if criminals condemned to life imprisonment might not be held securely by vocationally committed religious who would devote their lives to such people's care; better than in prison and more humane, but not released to frighten and offend the rest of us after a couple of decades (or less).
Saw a programme about mediaeval hospitals. Chicken soup! And Mass being said for them at the end of the ward. So, good nutrition and morale - so different from the bad food and screaming tellies of hosps today.
They didn't have the surgical procedures and drugs then, but didn't they get the rest right?
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