Poèmes
It is generally agreed that only preventive and promotional (1) medicine can improve the overall health condition in any country of the world. There is much hope in this statement for Third World countries which cannot afford to make expensive curative medical facilities available to all their inhab...
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| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Sprache: | Français |
| Veröffentlicht: |
1982
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| Online Zugang: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Zusammenfassung: | It is generally agreed that only preventive and promotional (1) medicine can improve the overall health condition in any country of the world. There is much hope in this statement for Third World countries which cannot afford to make expensive curative medical facilities available to all their inhabitants. Health education plays a major part in increasing people’s awareness of their needs and in developing their ability to take their own health care in hand. Efficient methods for achieving health education in Africa were developed over twenty years ago. Several projects were carried out successfully, thereby proving that these methods can be operative. Yet, most Africans have never benefited from any kind of health education. Why is it that efficient health education still does not exist in Africa on a large scale ? Our article originated in this question and in other criticisms concerning the present health policy followed by most African countries. It is the result of a joint effort by a group of health workers (mostly African) temporarily in France for part of their training. Some have already had field experience in Africa. As jar as health education is concerned, besides being very discouraging, their experiences have been partial or total failures. These have been discussed by the Group in order to discover the main obstacles which preclude efficient health education.The discrepancy between training, whether received in Africa or in Europe, and the knowledge and skills which are actually needed in preventive and promotional activities, must be emphasized. The African health workers’ training, which is consistent with a Western-type policy based on curative medicine, is not adequate to satisfy our peoples’ basic needs. Many suggestions have been put forward for changing this situation. However, most African countries do not seriously question their current policies. The African health worker is faced with a difficult choice : if he does what he has been trained to do, he will work in the curative care system ; whatever his professional capabilities, only a small minority will benefit from his work. The alternative lies in participating in preventive or promotional activities of which he has no particular knowledge and to which only minimal resources are allocated.The answers to this dilemma cannot readily be found. Among the health professionals in our Group, many do not yet know how close they can come to answering the people’s basic needs with the handicap of inadequate training and the limits imposed by current African health policies. However, the Group has proposed the following objectives : African health workers must continue to discuss their training, their past experience and their future work in order to develop a more efficient approach to preventive and promotional medecine in Africa ; during training, future African health workers should be encouraged to develop a new outlook concerning health policies in their countries ; those who work towards promoting preventive medicine and health education in our different countries should be able to exchange their experiences and offer students the opportunity to compare their current training with reality; finally, Western health workers who are interested in working in Africa should be allowed to find out how their African colleagues feel about their project. |
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