Human Development
Healthy human growth and development
Description:
Human development embraces every aspect of the maturation process, including its physical, biological, psychological, and social aspects. To bring about healthy development and to realize human potential, it is necessary to draw upon many areas of scientific knowledge and many components of the health service. Such areas as nutrition, communicable diseases, human reproduction, mental health, handicaps, and many others, together with the corresponding services, are related to human development. Many of these services have their greatest impact on development when they are employed early in the individual's life.The principal requirement for healthy growth and development is good nutrition. Closely related to this is the requirement for measures to prevent infection; to be effective, such measures must be taken early in life and pursued in later years. Human development is favoured at the outset by the careful management of pregnancy and by the practice of family planning. For those problems of mental and social health that have their origins in childhood, early preventive and educational measures help to forestall or obviate problems in adulthood. The early detection and treatment of handicapping conditions will improve the long-term prospects for almost all children with handicaps.
The promotion of healthy development cannot be achieved by measures that derive from any single health discipline, nor can health measures be considered independently of the broader educational, social, economic, and administrative factors that are crucial to human development. Health measures aimed at promoting biological development (especially the control of infection, the improvement of nutrition, the management of pregnancy, and family planning) can improve the health of people; higher levels of health in turn contribute to socio-economic development. It was at one time assumed that if a child survives he must be well, but studies of the health of survivors now show that even when mortality rates are falling, many health problems remain unresolved. In fact, there is evidence that many children do not attain their full developmental potential because of adverse environmental factors before and after birth.
[Environment]. The environment (natural or man-made, physical, chemical, biological, and social) has a significant effect, whether direct or indirect, on human development. While scientific knowledge of the environment is growing, there is still much to be learned about its immediate and long-term effects on human development. Furthermore, current knowledge is not always applied, or not used in the best way to improve the quality of human life. There still exist numerous environmental hazards that could be at least partially controlled.
If the environment of the community is grossly unhygienic, the child is exposed to a host of infectious agents that he is physically unable to withstand. Such exposure, with modifications, continues throughout life, but children who survive the initial encounter with infection and infestation acquire their own defences of active immunity. For millions of people in poor communities, the hygiene of the physical environment remains extremely unsatisfactory and dangerous. The absence of adequate facilities for the disposal of excreta accounts for the high prevalence of bacterial, viral, protozoal, and helminthic diseases. The lack of a plentiful, convenient, and safe water supply complicates efforts to maintain a sanitary environment, to keep food clean, and to practice good personal hygiene. Overcrowding and lack of ventilation predispose children to a host of airborne infections. Despite notable advances in control, insect vectors continue to be major sources of infection in many parts of the world.
[Economic and social factors]. Human growth and development are influenced at every stage by the customs and beliefs of the community. Where rapid technological changes are occurring, adjustments of social organization and of educational patterns are required. The type and degree of success of these adjustments affect the maturing individual profoundly. Efforts to improve health will not be successful unless they take into account the social and cultural characteristics of the communities in which they are made. Since economic resources, in the broadest sense, constitute our material and physical environment and are underlying determinants of many cultural, social, and behavioural patterns, they are dealt with in this section. A few significant examples of the social aspects of the human environment are discussed below.
1. [Economic resources:] The abolition of poverty remains a prerequisite for healthy development, even though affluence, if misdirected, may bring new problems in its wake. The importance to health of the economic factor extends well beyond the ability to pay for health services. Family income influences the kind and amount of food eaten, the quality of housing, the type and duration of education and the whole range of social and economic factors bearing on human development. The family's economic resources may be especially strained in the early years of marriage when the children are young and their needs are greatest.
2. [Education:] If mankind is to maintain or, if possible, improve its level of development in a changing world, it must be helped to adapt to its cultural milieu and to its biological and physical environment. Education, which engenders change and fosters adaptation, helps to make this adjustment and contributes significantly to mankind's level of development. At present, one of the major problems in all countries is the education of children to live in a world that changes rapidly, constantly, and unpredictably, rather than in a social organization that is stable.
3. [Cultural factors:] Cultural factors have an enormous impact on health and human development. Attitudes towards life and death determine the value placed on health by a community, and may thereby decide the demand for health services and the use made of them. The status of women affects pregnancy, parturition, and lactation: whether women are expected to do heavy physical work even during the perinatal period, whether their diet is restricted by food taboos or by the custom of serving women last, or whether breastfeeding is customary, will establish the perinatal environment of the child. The status of children, preferences for boys or girls, and child-rearing practices all influence the course of human development.
4. [Changes in the human setting]. Human development is influenced by the rapid changes that are taking place in the human setting. Modern technology, industrialization, the expansion of cities, migration, and population growth result in many ecological, social and biological changes. These changes are not confined to the developed countries; in fact they are relatively far more rapid and occur in far more difficult situations in developing countries. The demographic transition is the most dramatic example. Rapidly falling death rates and persisting high natality rates influence the family and the community profoundly, and directly affect plans for the provision of resources for optimum development.
Some changes are beneficial to human development: the improved production and distribution of food have helped to control famine; the application of scientific knowledge has helped to control disease and extend life expectancy. But other changes have created new problems and exacerbated old ones. Unwelcome are: the degradation of natural ecosystems under the impact of human settlement, the deterioration of cities as a result of uncontrolled migration from rural to already overcrowded urban areas, the extensive pollution of air and water with the unregulated expansion of industry, and many other problems.
5. [Genetic factors]. Growth and development are the result of interactions between the genetic information contained in the zygote and the environmental variables encountered in the course of time, from fertilization through birth to adulthood. Mutations occur, from time to time, usually for unknown reasons but occasionally from known environmental causes such as radiation. Slow modification of gene frequencies is occurring all the time under the influence of natural selection.
[Perinatal factors]. Perinatal factors include: the duration of gestation, birth weight, and other factors that operate through the mother during pregnancy and parturition. The origin of much faulty development is to befound in various abnormalities of pregnancy. The birth process itself may be hazardous, and the establishment of respiration may be traumatic.
[Family planning]. Family planning is its broadest sense includes the planning of pregnancies so that they occur at the desired time, the spacing of births for the optimum health of all family members, and the prevention of further births when the family has reached the total size desired. Family planning as a means of promoting human development rests on a number of associations between health (as measured by maternal, perinatal, infant, and child mortality and morbidity rates and by indices of physical growth and mental development) and reproduction (as expressed in the timing, number, and spacing of pregnancies). For example, there is a poor prognosis for the infant born of a mother who began childbearing at a very young age and has already had many closely spaced pregnancies. Family planning will have a positive effect on health when it is used to postpone the first pregnancy until the woman has completed her own growth, thus avoiding the double burden of growth and reproduction; when it is used to space births and extend the interval between pregnancies, so that the woman has time to recuperate after each birth; and when it is used to limit the total number of births, since a poor outcome of pregnancy is associated with both high parity and advan