The Hope of Prevention Training in South Asia Dodani Sunita 1, Chandrakant Pandav 2, Sisira Siribaddana 3, Ronald E LaPorte 4 & Paras Pokharel 5 (1Pakistan, 2 India, 3 SriLanka, 4 USA, 5 Népal) South Asian Health Preventionists Association (SAHPA)

Prevention Training in South Asia Learning Objectives  Current Health Problems in South Asia  Overview of health training in South Asian Countries  Power of prevention and health Prevention training programs  Use of supercourse global health network for building prevention training programs in south Asia

Prevention Training in South Asia  The BMJ issue on Health in South Asia addressed the current health problems.  In almost all South Asian countries (India, SriLanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal etc) double burden of diseases is increasing  Some of the solutions and hopes for improvement were mentioned  This double burden is difficult for South Asian countries who have little health means  A basic resource for health improvement was not mentioned and that public health and prevention

Prevention Training in South Asia The power of prevention world wide resulted in a 25 year increase in life expectancy. (WHO,2000) Almost all of this is due to prevention SriLanka is a best example as a developing country Health system in SriLanka  Sri Lanka achievements in public health with relatively low levels of public expenditure are impressive  The gains in Sri Lanka are apparent with a 99% vaccination  Pakistan, and India has achieved 50% of children vaccination against measles

Prevention Training in South Asia Health system in SriLanka  The health improvements are achieved inexpensively with public health, prevention, an emphasis on education in particularly women’s education.  Government commitment played a major role of linking health care and prevention. THIS IS ALL BECAUSE OF PREVENTION

Prevention Training in South Asia Health training in South Asian Countries  In South Asia, very few are trained as Preventionists  There are approximately 200 medical schools In South Asia, more than 5,000 students graduate every year  There are only 23 public heath programs providing some training but no Schools of Public Health in whole of South Asia

Prevention Training in South Asia  There are times more people trained in clinical medicine than those trained in preventive medicine  Training in public health has been neglected  Public health protects the health of populations, with a key emphasis on preventing disease  Medicine focuses on treating patients who are already ill.  Little cross-fertilization  In South Asia and other developing countries, first step should be to train medical students in the area of public health

Prevention Training in South Asia  Public health is considered a second-rated profession  Very little emphasis is on research training in prevention  This has resulted sparse baseline data on much of the diseases in South Asia  Public health training in medical students can be improved with better health prevention lectures

Prevention Training in South Asia Supercourse (  Established by Dr Ronald E LaPorte in 1996 and currently funded by National Library of Medicine  The mission is to connect world class scientists by sharing their best lectures and provide better material for teaching  There are 15,000 members worldwide, 40% are from developing countries and more than 800 are from South Asia  This is the library of more than 1,800 lectures from world renown scientists

Prevention Training in South Asia Schools of Public Health in South Asia  South Asian preventionists have contributed more than 150 lectures  We can reach a large segment of population to enrich curricula in the medical schools by using Supercourse lectures  The cost to accomplish this would be minimal as the content is readily available on the supercourse for free  No cost to access lectures as majority of medical schools are connected to the internet

Prevention Training in South Asia  This will not only provide free teaching material, but also a global expertise of thousands would be willing to help  A model of a school of public health in Pakistan has already been developed which can be used as a template  Telepreventive medicine could link medical schools in South Asia, with improved prevention lectures and networking of those engaged prevention.

Prevention Training in South Asia Accredited Schools of Public Health  Brick and Mortar schools of public health (like John Hopkins & Harvard) are needed to build the upper level infrastructure for prevention and health.  World-class schools of public health can be built for a fraction of the cost of a hospital, a medical school or a public health school in the US.  Schools should be accredited to world class standards.  These schools will compete with world-class programs because of unique populations and type of diseases.  Schools would be the training grounds for Ministers of Health and leaders of public health nationally and internationally.

Prevention Training in South Asia Accredited Schools of Public Health  Proper training in public health can inexpensively reduce the morbidity and mortality of diseases in South Asia.  It will also provide nations the best means for prevention.  This will rapidly improve training of all medical students in public health virtually for free.  The optimal approach to health in South Asia will be to train as many individuals in preventive medicine as those in clinical medicine.  The costs would be small, but the impact on health, immense