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North India
Health is the state of mind, body and soul. Health and Family are the most precious gifts. About 50 years ago, the joint family where all members of the family stayed together was a tradition that wasn followed but today the concept is quite unknown.
Health enables and strengthens a person’s ability to take and implement decisions; ill-health depreciates this ability. A person is then dependent on others to implement his/her decisions which usually do not ascertain same satisfaction or results. Historically, we Easterners have been careful of our hygiene because of our climactic conditions. Now, the health consciousness of a person is greatly dependent on the health etiquette of the family: the manner in which a family serves water or food, Do they dip fingers in a glass of water or share drinking vessels between ill and healthy members of the family? The cleanliness of the living area and the locality also affects health. Methods of disposing of kitchen waste to the simple issue of taking care of laundry became important factors in keeping the family healthy.
With the quantum advances made by the medical fraternity, the benefits of health care are being reaped by many. However, there are a lot of instances where the saying “prevention is better than cure” is applicable, especially to the lower-income families. A huge number of casualties are accredited to common diseases like malaria, diphtheria, polio (all, in part at least water-born diseases) and tuberculosis and whooping cough (airborn diseases). These are some diseases which can be prevented easily if the family improves its living environment, drinks boiled water, quarantines the diseased family member and ensures adequate medical assistance for them.
In this materialistic and competitive world, there are so many responsibilities bestowed on an individual from his first breath to his last that he is left with no time anymore to love and take care of himself or his family members. The race for being successful is so fast that man has become nothing more than a robot, fighting to go ahead and in turn getting the worst incentives like stress and depression. The number of young people from the age group of 15-20 committing suicide and undergoing depression, the increase of breaking families and divorces, are clear evidence of the imbalance of the human mind and environment. Family is the biggest support of a man, but if a man is not healthy then the same support becomes a burden. It’s the family that provides a clean and stress-free environment for an individual to grow and develop. Health is not just a family concern; it is very much a state concern too because it is only healthy families that make a healthy nation and in turn a developed and peaceful nation.
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