Rational of health education

As a Heath Extension Worker, we must recognise that most of our communities' major health problems and premature death are preventable through changes in human behaviours and at low cost. In considering the important concern of health education, the following points justify the rationale for health education:

• The continued existence and spread of communicable diseases such as malaria, TB, HIV/AIDS that need the involvement of the community members and environmental interventions. (These topics will be discussed in detail in the communicable diseases control module).
• About 75% of childhood illnesses are preventable e.g. measles by immunisation, malnutrition and diarrhoea by teaching mothers about good weaning foods and promoting breastfeeding up until the age of two.
• For some diseases, health education is the only practical choice to prevent the spread of the illness or to lead a normal life, e.g. HIV/AIDS.
• The increase of chronic non-communicable conditions which are easily preventable through awareness creation and cooperation of individuals with the problem. E.g. Hypertension
• Health promotion and prevention through lifestyle modification and behavioural changes are the best and the most cost-effective intervention than treatment.
• Increasing threats to the young from new and harmful behaviours, e.g. tobaccos use, teenage pregnancy, substance use, etc. which call for behavioural modification.
• Health education is a cross-cutting way to achieve major millennium development goals throughout the nation.
• Health education is one of the elements of primary health care, a basic level of health care that includes programmes directed at the promotion of health, early diagnosis of disease or disability, and prevention of disease, and also a cross-cutting approaches to address other elements. (These topics will be discussed in detail in the health service management Module).
• Health education is one of the sixteen packages of the health extension programme and a cross-cutting approach to achieving other components.

In fact, all these items are important and together they make up the rationale for making an effort in health education.