Why lack of jobs, housing, clean water work against efficacy of new treatments

Theefficacyofnewwaves of treatments aiming at longer quality of human life could be counteracted in the health systems of people who lack employment, access to decent housing, good education, income equality or struggle to get clean water, a PWC Health Research Institute report has shown.

These social determinants, which often lack in the lives of the majority of Nigerians, are in themselves ingredients of good health, and essential to facilitate the effectiveness of enhanced medical interventions.

Despite the staggering pace of health innovations being imported from advanced countries, the report shows it may not easily translate to better health outcomes when people stress to commute to work on poor road networks in highly polluted cities and low-income levels place them one illness away from poverty.

“Treatment alone won’t ensure that the level of human health improves; it may not even guard against its decline. The reality is that our systems are not built or designed to truly achieve health for societies.

“If healthcare organisations and governments do not take greater account of the social determinants of health, nations will not fully realise the tremendous potential of those medical advancements,” according to the report.

One in five respondents indicated they could not afford a healthy lifestyle, and a similar share said they did not have the time to focus on healthy behaviours in Pwc’s 2019 HRI global consumer survey. Clinical care, while vital, is, in fact, responsible for only 20 percent of a person’s health. The other 80 percent is attributed to health behaviours, the physical environment and socioeconomic conditions.

But some health experts differ on the position that the efficacy of treatment will be jeopardised if people live under poor condition.

Adetokunbo Fabamwo, chief medical director of Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), argues that deplorable living conditions may predispose people certain health conditions, it does not neutralise the efficacy of treatments. He agrees it is important that the government needs to tackle the environmental mess, feeding, transport, water and poverty, which sum up as social factors and determinants of health. However, the distribution of health challenges among the population could be blind to economic status.

“I do not agree that if you are offering treatment for a health condition and the patient is living in Mushin, for instance, he will not get better. It depends on what you are treating. The man does not have to live in Ikoyi to get better. Not everyone has to live in a posh area yet everybody will develop health conditions and has to be treated,” the professor of obstetrics and gynaecology explains.

“There are some health conditions that even the rich develop them. There is nothing you can do about cancer. But the government must take people away from living in deplorable conditions. If people have good transport and live in good conditions, they may not be predisposed to health threats.”