Personal Health

 Community Health and Personal Health

Community Health and personal health both are important .Personal health linked with personal hygiene.

The term personal hygiene includes all those personal factors which influence the health and well-being of an individual. It comprises a broad range of day-to-day activities such as care of the body regarding bathing and washing ,care of clothing, care of teeth, care of hair ,care of feet and nails ,care of posture, cultivating good habits regarding eating,diet,exercise ,sleep,smoking,drinking and attitudes towards life. Any disruption of these activities may damage health .For example, neglect of oral hygiene may lead to tooth and gum ailments, neglect of personal cleanliness may lead to scabies, eczema and fungal infection excessive smoking may lead to chronic bronchitis and lung cancer, and over eating may lead to obesity. The practice of personal hygiene is largely a matter of individual responsibility or self-care since, the foundations of personal hygiene are laid in early childhood, the goal of community health should be to provide a broad range of relevant information about health illness and disability and ways in which individuals can protect themselves and improve their own health.

In a way, the health of the whole community depends on the personal habits of various individuals who constitute the community. So unhygienic (dirty) habits of individual persons can create problems for the whole community .This is because dirty habits of some of the individual parsons make it difficult to maintain a clean and healthy environment. For example, a person may be perfectly healthy, always eating a balanced diet, having clean personal habits and lies in a neat and clean house, But if the neighborhood of such a healthy person is made dirty, unclean on polluted ,then this person cannot keep good health for a long time .So a long time. So a person cannot stay healthy if his home is clean but his neighbourhood is chrty or polluted . Let us consider an example to see how this may happen? If other people living in the neighborhood of a healthy person dump garbage and domestic water there-vectors such as flies, cockroaches etc. will go there mosquitoes and soil the neat and I open space, then disease causing (Pathogenic) germs and clean surrounding . This will ultimately lead to diseases in the healthy person living nearby also if a healthy. Also if a healthy person is given polluted water infected with pathogenic bacteria or protozoan’s, then in spite f all other favorable conditions, the person cannot stay healthy. In fact an important cause for the greater incidence of water-borne diseases in rural areas is that village people take their drinking supply form those ponds in which they and their cattle take bath. By bathing and washing the pond water becomes infected with disease causing organisms such as bacteria ,protozoan’s and eggs of worms (Safaris).People cannot stay well under these conditions, so they fall ill.
Community health care means all such activities which contribute to the improvement and well-being of the health of people in a community; community health care services are being provided in many parts of our country. These services are provided by the establishment of health care services such as primary health centers district hospitals community health centers, medical colleges , All India institute, regional hospitals, The functions of community health are given bellow:
1.     It provides clean (safe) drinking water.
2.     It provides good and efficient sewage disposal system.
3.     It provides a lot of clean air to the people by developing green open spaces such as public gardens and playgrounds, around the human settlements. .
4.     It provides the proper means of cleaning the areas around the human settlements and maintains an effective garbage (sold waste) disposal system; it also manages the domestic effluents /waste. Thus, it prevents the development of breeding sites of harmful insects.
5.     It provides medicals aid to people and vaccination to the children for example, immunization of children against six major preventable diseases such as tetanus, diphtheria, and whopping cough or peruses polio, measles hepatitis and tuberculosis, can check the incidence of these diseases.
6.     Different types of environmental pollution are managed by central and state pollution control boards.
7.     It provides family planning advices and services.
8.     It prevents food adulteration.
9.     It tries to keep off school going children from malnutrition by providing nutritious food and mild to them. The care of pregnant women and children would contribute to the reduction of maternal and child morbidity and mortality.
10. It educates the people to take of various diseases before they go out of control. Indeed most epidemics are spread because of ignorance and careless handling of the diseases by the people.