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IDEAS FOR A DISCUSSION ABOUT
SHARING AND SELF-RELIANCE
People’s health depends on many things—on food, on water, on cleanliness, on
safety. But above all, it depends on sharing—on letting everyone have a fair share
of land, opportunity, resources—and knowledge.
Unfortunately, many doctors (and many traditional healers) tend to carefully guard
their knowledge rather than to share it openly. Too often they use their special
knowledge to gain power or privilege, or to charge more for their services than is
fair.
Health workers can easily fall into these same unhealthy habits. So their training
must help them guard against this. It should help them realize that to share their
knowledge and skills freely is important to people’s health. Sharing of knowledge
helps people become more self-reliant.
Self-reliance as a measure of health: A person
who is very sick needs to be cared for completely.
He can do almost nothing for himself. But as his
health improves, so does his capacity for self-care.
Health is closely related to people’s ability to care
for themselves and each other—as equals.
These may be important ideas. But at present they are just our ideas. How is it
possible to get a group of health workers thinking about and reacting to ideas like
these? And forming their own ideas? Lecturing will do little good. A better way is to
help people discover things through thoughtful discussion.
To start, you might find it helpful to ask questions like these:
• How are persons who are sick different from persons who are healthy?
• Which are better able to care for
themselves? Who needs to be taken
care of?
• Who have more health problems, the
rich or the poor? Why?
• What do health and well-being
have to do with self-reliance? Of a
person? Of a family? Of a village or
community? Of a nation?
• Can you give examples from your
own experience?
After discussing these question you
might ask:
• What should be the main goal of
health education?
• What should be your responsibilities
as a health worker?
STARTING A DISCUSSION
Guide the students in discussing these things, but let them come up with their
own answers.