LETTERS: "EPIDEMIOLOGISTS are now the new sexy and they don't quite know how to handle it!" said a social scientist during an online zoom session a few weeks back.
The worldwide pandemic has made the epidemiologist the man of the hour. Him and all the mathematical modellers of disease, of course.
We need the modellers to be modern-day astrologers to predict which way this pandemic will go. And then we need the epidemiologist to tell us what we should do about it.
Public health has always been underrated. The importance of health prevention and promotion has played second fiddle to clinical medicine.
Where is the public health equivalent of the dashing Dr Shepard from Gray's Anatomy or the insufferable Dr House on television? But now, in the grip of this new and mysterious illness, it is to them we turn to for wisdom.
As a paediatrician in the Malaysian public sector who decided to take international health (which covers many aspects of public health), I have been asked multiple times why I decided to take this strange career path.
As a paediatrician doing rounds in the busy wards of the government hospital, as all paediatricians will attest to, I am not just treating illnesses but also advising parents on preventive steps to avoid the next bout of illness.
Unconsciously, we promote positive health behaviour as well as practices on good hygiene and feeding because we know that if we do not do that, the child will be in again with a bout of the same illness. Or with something else preventable.
The number of hospitals has increased but they never seem to be enough. Every day in the neonatal intensive care units, we struggle looking at our waiting list of patients, pondering which among them we can accept from smaller or private hospitals. Or which mothers awaiting high-risk deliveries we should make beds for, deliveries that can only be conducted if we have a bed available.
While on call, much of our time is spent making space for the never-ending stream of patients from the Emergency Department who have to be admitted.
If a patient ends up in the ward, there have been a failure at many levels of health promotion and health prevention for him to be there. What more if the patient ends up in intensive care.
Intensivists treat the fewest, sickest patients at the very top of the pyramid. They have a difficult job. They treat patients who have failed many levels of healthcare.
While we are on the subject of preventive and promotive health care, let us not forget personnel and doctors at primary healthcare facilities and general practitioners.
We should ensure the doors of preventive healthcare receive its due importance in terms of healthcare budget allocation and personnel.
Primary care doctors and public health specialists are the gate-keepers to these doors and they have to be of the highest calibre.
The positions need to be made attractive with adequate remuneration and career advancement opportunities so as to retain good, senior people.
Once primary health care and with it, public health (including the epidemiologist) is made sexy again, we can hopefully reduce building more specialised hospitals. Surely in the long run, this will be a more cost-effective measure.
B. PRIYA LAKSHMY
Reading Masters in International Health and Tropical Medicine, Oxford, United Kingdom
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times