When Cleaning Is A Matter Of Life And Death

One of Boston's major teaching hospitals is examining how it handles patients’ bodies and supports family members after a death.

*Medical research has done wonders to rid populations of diseases; however, the U.S. health care system has failed to appropriate the right resources to Medicare patients with one or more chronic conditions. Health Quality Partners in Doylstown, PA enrolls Medicare patients with at least one chronic illness and hospitalization and sends a trained nurse to see them on a routine basis, whether they are healthy or sick. As a result, the HQP program has reduced hospitalizations and cut Medicare costs.

The rate of Cesarean sections is on the rise in the United States, despite the higher risks of hysterectomy, hemorrhage, and infection, as well as the elevated expense. San Francisco General’s maternity ward, however, stands as an outlier by following evidence-based medicine that suggests decreasing C-sections and has also shifted from a pay-per-service incentive for the doctors to a salary or shift position.

Across the country, hospitals are embracing intensive intervention programs to help victims of violence — including those who have criminal histories — after they have been brought in for treatment of injuries. Such programs can help prevent retaliation, reduce the chance a patient will be violently injured again, and put people on track for success.

The poliovirus has plagued Nigeria for years, but the country is approaching near-eradication thanks to community public health workers' efforts to increase education, immunization and reporting. Throughout the country workers known as Disease Surveillance and Notification Officers are trained to recognize the symptoms of polio so the cases can be reported and addressed immediately. Coupled with the efforts of community informants, this approach has already resulted in parts of Nigeria becoming polio-free.

When people don't show up for an appointment, it can cost hospitals a lot of money and also unnecessarily increase wait times for other patients. A hospital in London is trying to reduce both the cost and wait problems by using artificial intelligence to predict which patients are most likely to be no-shows.

Enrolling local agents allows global partners to connect underserved and remote communities to healthcare. A partnership between Rwanda’s Health Ministry and the Boston-based nonprofit, Partners in Health, trains community-based health workers to communicate and connect people on the ground to health services across the country. Rwanda has also implemented reforms and services such as government-subsided healthcare, which has helped improve the life expectancy of its citizens.

The United States and Italy have been playing catch up in the mitigation of the coronavirus pandemic and were resistant to implementing social distancing, while other countries took more aggressive approaches. Now both countries are looking to China and South Korea to learn how sweeping actions and industrialized scaling of measures such as fever clinics, temperature check points, portable CAT scanning, and social isolation, have helped to contain the pandemic.

To address gaps in healthcare access, the local government partnered with organizations like Plan International, German Cooperation and the World Bank’s Saving One Million Lives Project to build, refurbish and equip primary healthcare centers across the state to provide better care. As of May 2023, 138 centers have been built or upgraded, offering maternity care services, child healthcare, vaccinations and family planning among other services.

Teams of Community Direct Distributors (CDD) are leading drug distribution campaigns to prevent and eliminate neglected tropical diseases in hard-to-reach, rural areas. These CDDs are members of the community they serve and are trained to educate the locals on disease prevention and administer the drugs themselves. With the CDDs’ help, several states have already eliminated some diseases and greatly reduced the spread of others.