Subject and tasks of hygiene

Basic concepts: hygiene and sanitation

The term "hygiene" originates from a Greek word meaning "healing" or "health-bringing". As a science, it is engaged in developing preventive measures designed to strengthen public health.

The subject of hygiene is the study of how various factors of a constantly changing environment affect a healthy body. This impact is not always clear-cut: it can be completely neutral (indifferent), favorable, or, conversely, threatening.

The object of hygiene is exclusively a healthy person who interacts closely with the surrounding world. This lies at the fundamental difference between preventive medicine and clinical medicine, where the focus is on a sick patient whose capabilities are limited due to pathology. The practical significance of this division is enormous: recommendations developed for healthy people can cause irreparable harm to a sick person, and vice versa.

If hygiene is a science, then sanitation (from the Latin "health") is its practical tool. Sanitation brings sanitary and hygienic recommendations developed by science to life. Control over their strict implementation, as well as over anti-epidemic measures, is undertaken by the state sanitary and anti-epidemic service, which also implements health-improving measures at the country level.

Impact of environmental factors on the body

For normal vital activity, the body requires certain conditions. They are formed under the influence of four groups of environmental factors: physical, chemical, biological, and social.

Often these factors are negative in nature and become risk factors. However, such a factor by itself rarely causes disease directly. The pathological process is triggered only when the impact of the risk is superimposed on certain internal conditions of a particular individual — for example, genetic predisposition, nutritional disorders (nutritional status), or weakened immune defense.

According to the severity of the consequences caused, all negative environmental factors are classified into three groups:

1. Catastrophic. They lead to the most severe outcomes: premature death, disability, congenital malformations, and mental retardation in children.
2. Severe. They are capable of provoking disruptions in the nervous system, failures in the body's development, and even changes in human behavior.
3. Adverse. They cause reversible functional disorders, changes in enzyme activity, as well as fluctuations in tissue mass and volume (weight loss, atrophy, hypertrophy, or hyperplasia).

The concept of health and its aspects

The problem of health is distinctly interdisciplinary in nature: it is studied by clinicians, preventive physicians, sociologists, demographers, and philosophers. The definition from the WHO Constitution (1948) is considered basic: health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. This applies both to an individual and to society as a whole.

Health is usually considered in two aspects:

• Individual aspect: the pursuit of achieving the highest level of health and creative activity over the longest possible life.
• Public aspect: the vitality of society as an integral social organism. This concept includes the potential for harmonious development, defense capability, economic growth, maintaining social and ecological balance, and the competent use of natural resources. (As D.D. Venediktov noted, public health is an integrated characteristic of the totality of individual health levels of society members).

Depending on the degree of adaptation to the environment, the entire population is divided into 4 health groups:

1. Absolutely healthy — complete adaptation of the body to environmental changes.
2. Practically healthy — some tension in adaptation systems is present.
3. Pre-disease — tension of individual adaptation mechanisms is noted.
4. Disease — a complete breakdown of adaptation occurs under the pressure of external factors.

Factors shaping population health

A fundamental condition on which the health of a nation depends is the economic potential of the state and how it is distributed. It is the economy that determines the funding volumes for primary prevention programs for leading causes of death (primarily oncological and cardiovascular diseases).

At the individual level, health is determined by a multitude of factors, the contribution of which is distributed as follows:

• 52–55% — lifestyle and socio-economic conditions.
• 22–25% — state of the environment.
• 18–20% — genetic predisposition.
• 8–10% — level of development of the healthcare system.

Thus, from 70 to 80% of health status depends on external conditions — lifestyle, economy, and ecology.

Briefly: answers to topical questions

Class and exam questions

What else to study on this topic

• Mechanisms of the body's adaptation to changing environmental factors.
• The role of the state sanitary and epidemiological service in health-improving measures.
• Specifics of state primary prevention programs for oncological and cardiovascular diseases.
• Integral assessment of public health according to D.D. Venediktov's concept.
• Criteria for the transition from a pre-disease state to the failure of adaptive mechanisms.

Other topics in the section "Introduction. Subject, History, Modern Environment"

Prepared by WhiteCoat Pro faculty in accordance with the medical school curriculum. For educational purposes only.