Chandler, AZ
Healthcare is the provision of medical care to people or communities. Doctors, nurses, and physicians are a few examples of the individuals who give this care. Hospitals are everywhere to help individuals and treat diseases. There are all sorts of medicines and vaccines now that can assist in curing most infections and illnesses. Only a few things don't have an exact cure such as cancer or monkeypox. Even with all these advancements and care places, not everyone in the world can get the healthcare they need. This has been a growing issue, and it has only worsened with the pandemic.
In the area of healthcare, there are 4 A’s: accessibility, availability, affordability, and acceptability. What do these mean? These terms are all factors that go into play when getting medical care. Accessibility is the idea of where people can get to the location of care. Depending on where they live, some individuals may have it easier or more challenging than others.
Availability is the scope of the treatment and how much is there for clients to use. An example of this is the coronavirus vaccines. When they were first made, there was only a limited supply in the USA in 2020. However, that number has more than tripled in 2022 and the USA was able to give a ton of vaccines to other countries around the world.
Affordability refers to how much the medicine or vaccines cost to the families. Nowadays, many treatments and medical procedures are very costly to attain in hospitals and clinics. Companies want to advertise their drug so much that they also keep the price up to gain more customers. This is a huge problem in today’s society because low-income families aren’t able to pay that much money. They’re left in the dust for medication and often don’t get the care they need.
Finally, acceptability is the extent to which people are willing to take the treatments and go to care places. One example of this was the coronavirus and how people choose whether to be vaccinated or unvaccinated against the virus. Depending on the responses, the crisis could have gotten better or worse. Healthcare is something that everyone should be able to get but without the 4 A’s fulfilled, it seems that it’ll continue to be a problem to get care in this world.
The issues with healthcare and receiving it has only gotten worse with the coronavirus and monkeypox outbreaks. When the coronavirus first hit in 2020, many hospitals were strained across the world. Some were past capacity and others had to be shut down. Workers lost their jobs and weren’t able to have health insurance. Some of them got burned out and exhausted from being at the hospital with all these new cases of covid. Families were left all over the place. Getting treatment was now ten times harder since there was a virus around and the hospitals were overpacked.
As for monkeypox, it is something new and similar to the coronavirus in its spread. There are already 20000 cases of monkeypox in the US and this could lead to hospitals being strained again. People may not get the healthcare they need. If healthcare is going to be open to all, then steps need to be taken to address the current issues. Medicine and vaccines need to be cheaper so more individuals can buy them. Transportation should be given to the ones who can’t access care alone. Treatments need to be spread more to underdeveloped countries. Getting healthcare has always been a big problem in today’s world primarily because of its costs. Companies and businesses want all the money they can get and often forget about the people who don’t have the financial capability to pay for healthcare. This is why access to healthcare should be expanded so that more families can be taken care of and it will be easier to combat future diseases.
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