According to the World health organization (WHO), it is estimated that at least half of the world population is unable to obtain essential health care services and is mostly attributed to the increased poverty levels. Further, the research articulates that each household among 800 million people spends about 10 percent of their income on health services in curing themselves or family members which leaves them with very little income to save and survive to push them to more severe poverty level as they live below a dollar per day. This article is going to focus on the various issues concerning global health care such as barriers to access to health care and how various organizations are working to overcome them.
Barriers to access of health care services globally
Poverty
Poverty is one of the major leading causes of individuals and households for most people in the world not to be able to access essential health care since most leave below the accepted levels. This is especially visible in most communities especially found in the middle and low-income countries as they are the most affected by financial constraints in accessing better health care services. These poor people mostly focus on surviving issues such as obtaining food where they aren’t even in a position to avail the three basic daily routine meal per day thus are in a bad position to be able to subscribe to health services such as health insurance for protection against unforeseen future health risk.
Transportation barriers
It is evident in most countries especially the developing and the less developed countries there is an increased physical gap between health care services facilities and the people who are to get the services. This situation is pioneered by the poor infrastructural designs and systems in places such as inaccessible roads, poor drainage systems and many more. Concerning this it is most of the people in these places are unable to be able to access health care services in time due to difficulties in accessing social amenities such as the health care outposts, as a result, most usually experience worsened health detriments which lead to death when extremes are exceeded.
Illiteracy and lack of awareness barriers
High poverty levels especially in low and middle-income countries is a barrier to the affordability of education services and thus people remain illiterate and unable to value various health quality measures at the end being the major cause of high mortality rates as well as low life expectancies. With this in mind, the people tend to mostly have the notion that their condition is permanent and irreversible attributed to lack of awareness of the availability of health facilities which can be able to look medically into their problems hence returning to the normal human state.
Ways in which organizations are working to overcome these barriers
Overcoming poverty
Attributed by financial barriers global health organizations are trying to mitigate this by the provision of mechanisms such as subsidizing the medical associated expenses through remitting finance to concerned health facilities and galvanizing medical volunteers.
Overcoming transportation barriers
Most global health organizations are dealing with this problem through the various initiatives especially steered by Non-governmental organizations through various health programs where they conduct regular outreach services to the rural poor by proving home visits. This is also addressed by these organizations by the construction of various health delivery services in remote villages such as dispensaries where people care able to access them with ease.
Overcoming education and the unawareness barriers
Global health organizations are breaching the educational gap by proving special health workers and community members’ training to increase awareness of available health care services and good health practices in the concerned communities. Besides, global health organizations are also increasing awareness of the poverty causing health problems through education across the world by mechanisms such as health education in the affected countries.
Conclusion
It is vital to note that a healthy world is a great step towards prosperity as people in the various nations are not indebted backward by barriers to health care such as financial barriers, education and lack of awareness, and transportation barriers. If all these barriers are being comprehensively dealt with by the various global health organizations through the various initiatives such as health care services provided to the concerned states then it is vital towards achieving global universal health care.