1.1. Medico-sociological views on medicine, healthcare, and the health protection system
Medicine is an integrated system of scientific knowledge and practical activity aimed at strengthening and maintenance of health, prolongation of the human life span, as well as prevention and treatment of human diseases. To implement these tasks, medicine examines 1) the biological structures and physiological processes under normal and pathological conditions; 2) the positive and negative effects of natural and social environments on human health; 3) human diseases (the causes, mechanisms of genesis, development, and symptoms), and 4) the possibilities to use diverse physical, chemical, and biological factors and technical facilities to prevent, reveal, and treat diseases1.
Public health is a system of governmental and public socioeconomic and medical measures directed to maintain and improve public health2.
The healthcare system is a set of interacting legal parties and institutes of society organized to implement the political, economic, legal, social, scientific, medical, and sanitary-hygienic measures directed to protect, maintain, and strengthen public health and to prevent diseases.
Before 1970-1980, the achievements of the healthcare system can be explained by the progress in preventing acute infectious diseases. After the development of public healthcare, the most urgent healthcare tasks have been shifted to prevention medicine. Approaches to the problems of health and disease changed dramatically with more emphasis being placed now on the social environment of human beings. Modern research greatly expanded the studies of social phenomena determining public health, reproduction of population, and related problems, which are carried out on the basis of comprehensive medico-sociological analysis.