LECTURE SUMMARY CHAPTER 2 WEEK 2
Important things to understand while studying health issues:
• Most influencing factors of health status.
• Studying the historically occurred key patterns in health status.
• Indicators employed in measuring different health statuses.
KEY HEALTH INDICATORS:
Morbidity:
It’s an inability of a person to perform subjectively/objectively from a
psychological/physiological state of being fit which is caused by a sickness.
Mortality: It simply means death, usually used in counting mortality (death) rates.
Disability: It’s the tendance of a person to be incapable of fully being productive, a condition
that hinders a person to fully/actively participate. It can be temporary or long term.
INCIDENCE AND PREVALENCE
Prevalence rate: Is the rate used to measure total number of existing cases of a certain health
condition (such as HIV, cancer and etc.) in a given period of time compared to the number of
people at risk.
Incidence rate: Is the rate used to measure the total number of new cases of a certain health
condition, in a certain period compared to the number of people at risk.
Diseases that have high prevalence and incidence rate need more attention as they can put a
country’s population and economy in a worse state.
DETERMINANTS OF HEALTH
Health determinants: Are any factors that can influence your health.
• Factor 1: These are such as Individual lifestyle/ non modifying factors (such as: age, sex,
and constitutional factors). Example genetic makeup of a person can make him/her
prone to certain diseases. Some diseases are prone only to some certain sex.
• Factor 2: Social and community network. Examples such as household, education and
etc. Poor health behaviors.
• Factor 3: General socio – economic, cultural and environmental factors.
Why health status indicators are important:
• They are used to understand causes of death, morbidity and disability, in order
to estimate and evaluate the health status of a population.
• Helps in collecting data through disease surveillance.
• Helps in comparing collected data from different countries.
KEY HEALTH STATUS INDICATORS
• INFANT MORTALITY RATE: it’s the rate used to measure the total number of infant
deaths that are under the age of 1 year (before one their first birthday).
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LIFE EXPECTANCY AT BIRTH: it’s the average number of years a newborn baby is
expected to live if the current mortality trends remain the same though out the
newborn baby’s life.
MATERNAL MORTALITY RATIO: The number/ratio of women who died while giving
birth due pregnancy complications. Sample space = per 100,000 live births in a year.
NEONATAL MORTALITY RATE: it’s the total number of deaths of kids under 28 days of
age.
UNDER -5 MORTALITY RATE (CHILD MORTALITY RATE): It’s the probability that detects
if a child can survive to reach the age of 5 or not.
PERINATAL MORTALITY RATE: it’s the number of deaths from the 28th completed weeks
of pregnancy up to the 1st week of life. Can be caused by still birth or miscarriage.
Perinatal period covers the 28th week, when the baby is born until 1 week after the
birth.
NOTE:
• Sample space for neonatal, under-five, perinatal and infant mortality rate is calculated
per 1000 live births in a given year.
• The higher the rates and ratios of the above health indicators, the poor the health status
of the country.
• Neonatal, infant and under-5 mortality rates all overlap each other, these health
indicators are connected to each other rather than independent.