Making Public Health Public - MIDEGO, the Way to Go!
"The main challenge in public health and development is to keep it simple." Elvira Beracochea, MD. MPH.
Public Health is MIDEGO’s Business. So, What is Public Health?
Public health is the organization and management of programs and services to protect, promote and restore health in a population. It is MIDEGO’s job is to make Public Health so simple and accessible that everyone has the knowledge and skills to take care of their health. It is also our job to find ways to ensure that everyone in a population has access to the services that protect, promote and restore their health when needed.
Every country has a more or less developed public health system that complements other efforts to protect, promote and restore health such education, particularly women’s education, clean water, food security, protection of the environment, protection of human rights and the concerted effort to develop services that enforce these rights and the provision of services to all according to their needs. Therefore, public health is part of how we live in society and an essential development tool to help high and low income countries provide for the survival of their people.
How does MIDEGO help make it public?
At MIDEGO, we believe health is everyone’s job and we work to deliver services and products that help everyone do their job. Public health is developed based on one basic assumption, that like the right to life, education and security, access to health is a human right, and therefore it is every government’s and every citizen’s responsibility to do their share to protect and enforce this right. MIDEGO’s mission is to work with governments, civil society organization and everyone that wants to ensure the right to health everywhere. Therefore, MIDEGO has developed a number of services and products that help make public health a public service. We will not stop until every community has a public school and a public health center to protect, promote and restore the health of its citizens. A public health center is a center where priority promotive and curative services are planned and delivered and from where outreach services are sent out to reach those that cannot come to the clinic, the too old, too young or too sick. Each community will have a public health center that responds to its own unique health needs. For example, a public health center in the US may include at a minimum the following priority services:
1. Antenatal care and family planning services for all women
2. Children’s immunizations and tetanus immunization for everyone
3. Health screening: mammograms, occult blood test, HIV/AIDS, and pap smear
4. Obesity screening, weight monitoring and control
5. Cardiovascular check up and education
6. Alzheimer’s screening and activities of daily living screening and education
7. Mental health screening: bereavement, divorce, depression, domestic violence, child abuse, etc.
On the other hand, a public health center in rural Angola may offer some similar services and also at the minimum include the following priority services to every citizen every day:
1. Antenatal care and family planning for all women2. Children’s immunizations and tetanus immunization for everyone
3. Anemia detection, deworming and Vitamin A supplementation
4. Integrated management of childhood illnesses
5. Breast feeding and appropriate nutrition education
6. Sexually transmitted infections education, condom distribution and HIV/ AIDS screening and counseling
7. Mosquito net distribution and malaria prevention education
Public health makes communities healthier and reduces inequities and disparities. MIDEGO provides all the public health tools and procedures to match services to needs and make them happen with quality, efficiency and consistency. Contact MIDEGO at info@midego.com. We can help you make a difference in public health.
