Tribune. The health Ségur resulted in investments made essential by the health crisis, such as the upgrading of the professions in health and medico-social establishments, but it missed the opportunity to reshape the system. Likewise, the revival of local production of active ingredients for drugs is being considered without being part of a broader overhaul of health policy. The Covid-19 epidemic, which has nevertheless placed health at the heart of concerns for more than a year, has not given rise to a real awareness of the importance of transforming the healthcare system into health system, that is to say a system combining curative and preventive.
Care is needed when a health problem arises. The individual then becomes a “patient”, awaiting treatment: it is the curative. On the other hand, prevention concerns people who are not sick: it is about covering a risk, a potential demand for future care. It is our fear, our aversion to getting sick or hurting ourselves that leads us to act.
Nested model
However, our education, our work, our housing, our living environment or even our medical history affect our preventive behavior. As a result, a health system that does not sufficiently integrate prevention cannot fight against health inequalities. In addition, the demand for care depends on our perception of the need for care. This perception is the result of the state of health but also of socio-economic factors. Defining a health model based mainly on the supply of care is, in a way, leaving individuals to wait until they are sick before resorting to it. It is therefore a model that insufficiently takes into account the interweaving of socio-economic and medical.
The health crisis has made the need for prevention visible. The first wave of contamination by the Covid-19 virus led to the confinement of the population. This measure was necessary to prevent the explosion of the hospital system. The number of patients to be treated urgently became too large in relation to the capacities of care. Thus, to manage the shortage of supply, strict preventive measures have been adopted. This chain of action-reaction highlights the close link between the curative and the preventive: to avoid treatment, we must act upstream, through prevention.
In recent weeks, the urgency of administering vaccines to the most vulnerable has further highlighted this link. The vaccine is the solution to prevent contamination and therefore prevent the need for treatment. The government is now under pressure from the population to provide it with a means of prevention, a vaccine. Can we not think that this is the opportunity to initiate a broader policy genuinely integrating prevention for more equitable health for all? Delaying healthcare spending through an active prevention policy automatically slows down healthcare spending.
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