Stop Being Patient And Take Charge Of Our Health

A saying of ancient China declared “the ordinary doctor cures the disease, the good doctor heals the person, the excellent doctor heals the community.”

This saying shows us to what extent traditional medicine maintained a holistic vision that we are only recently beginning to rediscover and incorporate into modern medicine: along with psycho-emotional and environmental factors we must take into account social factors.

Institutions can play a key role in supporting individual decisions, so that progress towards self-management in health should be complemented by social demands and collective actions that reinforce individual responsibility, as well as the participation of citizens in all policies. sanitary.

Regain control of our health and the healthcare system

The most important step is to put the institutions at the service of health.

This means breaking with the influence of the pharmaceutical industry, which currently controls or determines to a great extent the training of professionals, specialized information and that which reaches the ordinary citizen, medical research and scientific-medical orientation in the one on which the public and private health systems are based.

Only by breaking with this situation can we regain control of our health. But we also need other changes.

1. A truly public healthcare

Health systems, which should be truly public and managed by citizens, should be at the service of health and not of the administration of symptomatic pharmacological remedies that do not affect the true causes of diseases but rather help to hide them.

These causes mostly have a multiple origin: food, education, working conditions, urban planning, destruction of ecosystems, industrialization and appropriation of natural resources by big capital or the absolute lack of regulatory processes that defend the health and rights of the people. consumers.

2. Professionals with a broader look

Changes are also necessary in the training of professionals. In order to introduce them, the doctors, nurses, analysts and the rest of the personnel who are going to put them into practice must be trained with another vision of health and medicine.

A vision that replaces the current authoritarian or paternalistic role that orders and prescribes, for a role of advisers who contribute their knowledge and experience to advise citizens in an independent and plural way.

They cannot limit themselves to transmitting the slogans of the pharmaceutical industry and a closed medical model that is not only failing when it comes to treating numerous health problems, but is also constantly causing new diseases, to the extent that drugs are currently the third leading cause of death in the world.

3. More citizen participation

We need mechanisms that guarantee that participation is not a decorative procedure, but is translated into concrete and real actions that cover the entire health system, starting with the preparation of budgets and going through internal organization.

This includes policy development, policy and program design, content discussions, and most importantly and immediately, enabling us to make informed decisions about healthcare procedures and interventions.

Currently there is a right “of informed consent” that in practice becomes a mere procedure in order to legally protect the doctor. The patient does not choose between authentic alternatives, since the health system is totally dominated by a single medical model and the option offered is to consent to a solution that the doctor usually presents as unique.

4. Real information and prevention

We need new ways to inform the population and professionals through free publications, citizen associations and professionals not sponsored by pharmaceutical companies.

Breaking with medicalization would allow an ecological approach to prevention that would consider health problems as imbalances caused by living conditions, especially those at the beginning of life.

It is necessary to promote laws and funds for ecological breeding, starting with the protection of creatures with long-term maternal permits that favor adequate development during the first years. This would be a key preventive measure if a harmonious society is to be promoted.

Long-term maternity leave is a key measure for a healthy society.

5. Stop being “patient”

Taking charge of our health also has profound social implications.

The organization through groups that promote participation and guarantee the ability to decide and the right to receive information is a first step to achieve legal changes that build another health model in which citizens have an active role – not a “patient” – in the management of our health.

In fact, there are already some initiatives that combine the principles of ecology and solidarity economy.

An example is the Cooperativa Integral Catalana is a social transformation initiative based on self-management, self-organization and direct democracy.

One of its projects is Cooperative Public Health, which promotes a holistic conception of medicine, humanized and quality comprehensive health, as well as various health education initiatives.

Another is the Cooperativa de Salut, which complements alternative health services with courses and workshops, and works with a cooperative, supportive and participatory socio-economic model based on equity and sustainability.