Authors: Traian Bocu
Affiliation
”Iuliu Haţieganu” University of Medicine and Pharmacy Cluj-Napoca
Editor-in-Chief of the “Health, Sports & Rehabilitation Medicine” Journal
Vice-President of the Romanian Medical Society of Physical Education and Sport
In the studied time period 2010-2018, the activity of the Public Health District Authority (PHDA) of keeping under control or improving from one year to another the health prevention and health promotion activities in Cluj county – Romania can be observed (1). The methods used comprise specific programs and subprograms as well as information-education means in public health, intended for the sedentary population, adults and children. However, unfortunately, there is an annual percentage increase in the main chronic diseases (or groups of diseases), both in terms of prevalence and medico-social impact. By going deeper into the reports, poor financial support can be evidenced, as well as many methodological errors at all levels, which explains the stagnation or gradual regression of the health of the population in Cluj county. We mention only a few causes of this phenomenon, which can be observed quite easily from the content of the annual reports:
- The reports are not homogeneous, they do not rigorously monitor the same parameters every year, which does not allow observing the annual trends by diseases.
- The reports do not evidence the involvement in health promotion of all actors that assume the mission of promoting and maintaining population health. We refer especially to the Ministry of National Education and the Ministry of Sport, as well as to the many non-profit and limited liability organizations and to the great high performance sports clubs, which play no role and are not involved in promoting population health.
- In the reports, there is no statistical reference to the sedentary population segment, school-age youth, adults and elderly, from which the annual evolution of this population segment that should normally decrease could be estimated. Here, the decrease in the number of exemptions from exercise in sport classes, as well as the involvement of an increasingly high number of students in physical and sports activities should be aimed at. Collaboration, which is currently lacking, between PHDA and students at faculties of physical education is required.
- It can be seen that the budgets allocated to support local information-education campaigns on public health topics for the duration of one year are extremely low (5000 lei, about 1200 euro).
- No report mentions as part of the recommendations formulated therein the problem of the absence of the Law on health prevention, extremely useful with respect to the actors responsible for population health promotion and the forms of collaboration between entities playing such a role.
These conclusions can be extended and developed in a review article on the same topic, for the benefit of all.
References
http://www.dspcluj.ro/ Accessed online: 2019, August.
03a-editorial102
