Health Sciences as Bridge to Peace

        Peace is defined as a harmonious relationship existing between two groups, people, state and citizen, religion etc. War, conflict and violence are always unwelcoming events that have affected the world in different eras. It has been seen quite often that whenever there is situation of dispute, the civil society, politicians, literary and religious scholars play their part by advocating for peace on their own grounds. Scientists, researchers and technologists do not take bother much about this issue on part of advocacy. The later trend can also be observed in Pakistani society, where scientists and health professionals remain within their self made limits.

          In maintaining peace, preventing conflicts and prevailing over disputed zones to bring peace conditions not only politicians, civil society, beaurocrates and literary scholars can play their part but also scientists, researchers and health professional can include themselves through effective strategies related very much to their profession.

Health can be defined as complete mental, physical and social well being and the structure of health science can be taken as a 3 step process. That is:

                                 

                                        Diagnoses----Prognosis-----Therapy

        

          The main target of the health professional is “Therapy” and our political analyst can use this strategic point as part of creative thinking for peace establishment w.r.t health professionals. Scientists, researchers, nurses and doctors who are directly or indirectly related to human health can do advocacy for peace by using the tool of human health which can badly be affected during time of hostile environment.

        Looking back into history one can see the examples of how health professionals tried to work for peace on the basis of their profession. For instance, take the Iraq war of 2002 when USA announced invasion over this already war torn region. Throughout the world, citizens were exerting themselves to prevent this and so the health professionals through the concept of “predictive epidemiology”. A US-UK consortium of health professionals had worked from epidemiological data of mortality and morbidity from the first war against Iraq. They used knowledgeable predictions of likely war scenarios to predict impact on population deaths and injuries, impact on health services and infrastructure.

             Although, those efforts of health professional could not prevent the Iraq war but it paved a way to the health professionals of the rest of world regarding role of them in peace and harmony of the world. Similar efforts can also be seen in the case of Afghanistan, where certain international organizations are involved in dialogues on human health grounds with NATO forces to resolve the conflicts and bringing Afghanistan back to its peaceful conditions.

            Inspite of the acknowledgement that health professionals can play a significant role in bringing amity to world, there are certain limits that these experts face which include no formal education in political issues, peace studies, or public policy. If these hurdles could be prevailed over, then role of health experts can be used as a great tool (also may be as back up plan) to support unity and peace in the world. 


Reference
-  Neil Arya, Joana Santa Barbara (2008). Peace through health; how health professionals can work for a less violent world.