Although medical illnesses are on the rise, medical advancements have made it possible to effectively fight against these illnesses. As for your role, while knowing your medical condition or following medical advice is important, being aware of it and preventing your self is equally essential.
Preventive health is a science which deals with disease prevention and health promotion. Your doctor will advise you to follow certain preventive measures to prevent specific diseases. While you need to follow those, you must also be aware of general guidelines that need to be followed for disease prevention.
Preventive measures
Preventive measures in order to prevent diseases range from simple hygiene to the use of world class technologies. Some of the measures that you can easily adopt are:
Personal hygiene
You must have learnt about personal hygiene in your childhood. These are those basic but crucial measures that need to be revised over and over again.
- Personal hygiene includes activities like daily bathing, brushing of teeth twice a day, washing hands before eating, covering your nose while sneezing and coughing, etc.
- With the increasing pollutants and the widespread of droplet infection, it is advisable that you cover your nose and mouth while moving around in crowded areas like hospitals or public places.
- The use of sanitizers is also advisable for instant cleaning of hands after public use.
Community hygiene
Community hygiene involves and keeping your environment clean and a healthy place to live in.
- Make sure your surroundings are kept clean and free from garbage and other waste.
- Care should be taken to avoid water from getting accumulated and remaining stagnant as it can encourage breeding mosquitoes and other insects.
- Nearby areas should be sanitized and sprayed with recommended pesticides as per instructions.
Protection
There are certain instances where you may have to protect yourself from disease producing organisms or infected people.
- It is advisable to use a face mask and cover nose and mouth in such public places.
- It is also recommended that you use mosquito repellents, creams and other protective measures.
- When it comes to protection from sexually transmitted diseases, it is better to adopt measures advised by your physician and the governing bodies in your area.
Immunization
Immunization is an advanced way of increasing your immunity and developing protection against diseases. For some diseases immunization is compulsory right from the birth of a child. For many other diseases although optional, vaccines are present and it is advised that you take advice from your doctor regarding the same. Certain vaccines are taken annually or some are taken during the outbreak of the respective diseases.
Preventive health check-up
Many hospitals and medical centers have the facilities for preventive medical health check-ups. You can talk to your doctor about medical investigations and health plans relevant for your age, gender and medical status. For example, executive health plans for busy people working in a corporate setup.
Be aware
Along with all these measures, it is important that you be aware of your surroundings and the medical cases that are occurring around. The governing bodies make announcements and release news for the public regarding various medical diseases and their prevention programs. Hospitals and doctors conduct camps for awareness and prevention of diseases. For example, there are medical camps checking blood sugar levels, conducted for screening of diabetic patients.