Annals of the University of Oradea: Economic Science (Dec 2011)
THE ROLE OF THE PREVENTIVE MEDICINE IN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT. A STUDY CASE ON THE PRIVATE MEDICINE SECTOR IN ORADEA
Abstract
The concerns with respect to healthy life styles, preventive medical approaches, safe environment, and early warning systems represents the Millennium Development Goals, the United Nations Organization's so called Decade for Education for Sustainable Development, the European Union's sustainability strategy, the Global Environmental Outlook of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the ten Principles of the UN Global Compact, all aiming to attain the sustainable global health, which is possible only through collective multilevel efforts for the sake of human wellbeing, equity, livelihood, and worldwide sustainable development and stability. Romania, as an EU Member States, have to take into consideration the fact that health is a precondition for economic growth and sustainable development, and this way, it has to promote the EU common approaches to health policy. Between these approaches, the prevention plays a key role when addressing to the global health challenges such as the pandemics control, and the rising tide of non-communicable diseases. For these purposes, preventive strategies need to include promoting polices that foster a healthy environment, healthy life styles and equitable access to health care and information, so, it is necessary to meet the requests towards sustainable global health. From this perspective, for the empirical research pursued in this paper, we have considered the Global Challenge Index, which focuses on seven global challenges of the new millennium, and on this basis, we have compared Romania with the other EU Member States. Then, we have computed the index for Oradea and its neighbour region, including the framework of a comprehensive analysis of political, economic and social target system. The key issues we have considered in this context were referring to lifestyles, life care and education for lifelong well-being, partnerships for health, institutions and related policy areas, alternative intercultural preventative medical approaches, and the good governance, policy relevance, and corporate social responsibility, and were analyzed mainly referring to the potential of the Romanian private medicine sector in preventive medicine. The conclusions of the paper reveal the fact that the region of Oradea is much above the average index of Romania when it comes to preventive medicine, but still behind the other EU Member States. So, the background for meeting the precondition for economic growth and sustainable development in Oradea was created, but there are still a lots to be done on short term, even because of the features of this area, which situates it at the top of the cancer diseases registered cases in the country.
