Emerging and Thrust Areas of Health Care System and Hospital Administration

Contents: Preface. 1. Environmental health. 2. Health education. 3. Preventive health. 4. Health management information system (HMIS). 5. Telemedicine. 6. Medical tourism. 7. Health and travel. 8. Appropriate technology for health. 9. Health and research. 10. Health and peace. 11. Health and disaster management. 12. Health and stress/strain. 13. Health and housing. 14. Health and violence. 15. Health and sports. 16. Urban health: healthy cities. 17. Health and yoga education. 18. Urban slums: living disasters. 19. Population explosion disaster. Bibliography. Index.

"Health affects and is affected by other sectors of development. Therefore, there is a need to concentrate on other areas which are directly and indirectly beneficial to health. We must identify the emerging and thrust areas and include them in the promotion of health.

Poor environmental sanitation in India is responsible for a number of diseases. We must ensure healthy environment for healthy living. Exposure to infection in India comes mainly from lack of safe water and sewerage disposal facilities in most of the areas.

New developments are taking place in the area of health like telemedicine, which should be harnessed to promote health in neglected areas. In addition, health education should be part and parcel of every health programme.

Considering the vast numbers of people in India, the majority live in rural areas but with an expanding proportion in urban settings, the need for networks of health services developed as close as possible to these populations and adapted to their changing needs is a challenging priority.

Contemporary medicine faces a special challenge in India and other third world countries. We should, of course, embrace science and technology, else we will be left far behind.

The future world will witness new diseases and new infections. New diseases could result from changes in social or environmental conditions. Micro-organisms and in particular viruses can mutate for known and unknown reasons; and can produce diseases never before encountered in the history of man. HIV is an example of a virus which probably mutated several times before it struck our contemporary world." (jacket)