610 Medizin und Gesundheit
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Byzantine Medicine as a Concept of Late Ancient Christian Healing Art. The great success of Greco-Roman medicine – in its main stream a brilliant combination of humoral pathology and dietetics canonized by Galen of Pergamon in the 2nd century CE – is probably the most surprising phenomenon of conceptual longevity in the history of Western culture and civilization. Its decline begins as late as in the early 17th century, when William Harvey describes the circulation of blood on the basis of the new experimental method, initiating not only the collapse of Galen’s theory of blood circulation, but also of humoral physiology and pathology in general. Only then, i. e., more than 1500 years after Galen and 2000 years after Hippocrates, new theoretical concepts of medicine appear on the horizon, gradually replacing medical thinking of antiquity. However, the evolution of Greco-Roman medicine was not a straightforward process; it was strongly influenced by changes in language and dramatic institutional and political changes after the separation of the Roman Empire at the end of the 4th century. Byzantine medicine in the East encompasses the common medical practices of the empire from about 400 to 1453 AD, compiling and standardizing medical knowledge and wisdom (iatrosophia) into new Greek textbooks.
Doing Health: Chinese and Other Perspectives. In ancient China, health was related to the individual person and their unique life. Both medical and philosophical texts testify to this: Maintaining vitality in the course of one’s own lifespan was a priority. Daily caring for one’s health revolved around Qi 氣 – a universal medium that is at the same time material and spiritual, emotional and neutral, unitary and diverse, as well as biological, psychological and physiological. Health thus becomes a verb, an act, a property to be preserved, a wavering and oscillating between pleasure and strength. Not least because of the pandemic, the demand for ‘traditional’ healing expertise rose worldwide. Against this background, early Chinese views on life are of unprecedented importance: From their perspective, a reorientation of public and global health policies seems inevitable.
The Āyurvedic Concept of Health. Āyurveda denominates the most important traditional medical system in South Asia. It looks back on an extensive corpus of literature from the past two thousand years. Since the 1980s, Āyurvedic medical practice has been increasingly spread outside South Asia. One reason for its success might be that Āyurveda places great emphasis on the maintenance of health, prevention, and regeneration. It also developed a broad and differentiated spectrum of diagnostic and therapeutic options, which, based on its own systematic paradigm, have been elaborated in detail over millennia. Āyurveda’s canonical texts not only provide systematic descriptions and definitions of the Āyurvedic understanding of health, they also contain detailed treatises regarding their relevance for everyday life and concrete medical instructions. This article provides basic information about the Āyurvedic understanding of health and contextualizes it within the everyday practice of both conventionally and Āyurvedically trained medical doctors in Germany.
Physician Health in the Workplace. Physicians are exposed to a variety of risks in their everyday work. There is an obvious risk, especially in view of the current pandemic, of contracting communicable diseases like COVID-19, HIV and Hepatitis C. The commercialization of healthcare and associated cost-saving measures – particularly in the field of human resources – lead to unhealthy workloads and, correspondingly, an increased risk of suffering from psychological disorders like burnout and depression. Scientific studies reveal a correlation between psychological stress and the quality of patient care. The health of medical personnel must be given high priority in the interest of both patients and those working in the healthcare system. This requires adequate funding with staffing that is appropriate to the patient and the task at hand, thus ensuring humane and high-quality patient care. In addition, physicians must be relieved of performing non-medical tasks, and their resilience must be strengthened through individual and operational measures.
Taming the European Leviathan: Health as Politics. A Research Project. This article outlines the research project „Taming the European Leviathan: The Legacy of Post-War Medicine and the Common Good“. It is funded by a Synergy Grant of the European Research Council and unites European researchers comparing health policies (from drug research to prevention) in West- and East-European countries, e.g., Bulgaria, Germany, France, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and the United Kingdom. The common goal is to provide a different perspective on post-war Europe, a perspective that emphasizes commonalities rather than differences.
Health Data as a Public Good. Routine health data, which are collected by health insurers and other agencies in the health care system, offer enormous potential for health monitoring and research. Germany has been slow to make such data available for socially beneficial purposes, partly due to concerns about privacy and data protection. Against this background, we discuss some of the most important potential uses of routine health data and call for a broader societal debate about the benefits, risks, and appropriate regulation of routine health data usage.We then review theWestern Australian Data Linkage System as an example of a data infrastructure that is characterized by high levels of stakeholder and patient involvement and a sophisticated method of privacy protection. While Germany does not need to copy this approach, we hope that the experiences of Western Australia and other countries will stimulate and inform the overdue debate about a modern, responsible, and sustainable approach to socially beneficial health data usage in Germany.
Prevention: The Concept of Preventive Risk Reduction, Illustrated by the COVID-19 Pandemic. Risk assessment and risk management based on the precautionary principle are instruments to protect humans and the environment against uncertain threats and risks. At the same time, however, trade-offs must always be made in order to maintain cultural, economic and social objectives and to honor the principle of proportionality. Notwithstanding the need for continuous risk reduction, society must distance itself from the idea that science can predict all dangerous events and developments and exclude them through preventive action. At best, risk analyses are able to identify the possible threats and uncover weaknesses in the system. In addition, risk assessments help us to make better decisions in the conflict of objectives between the secondary consequences of taking risks (such as exposure in the event of a pandemic) and the secondary consequences of the protective measures taken (economic, social, cultural consequences). In this sense, decisions about acceptability of risks or risk reduction measures always reflect a combination of scientific knowledge with balancing judgments.
The World Health Organization (WHO), Pandemics, and COVID-19: How to Proceed With a Multilateral Concept of Global Health? The WHO grew to 194 member states, and with globalization, geopolitical shifts, and internal reorganizations, the lines of influence have become more complex. In 2020, the United States severely endangered multilateralism in health. Recently, the Biden administration has revived US commitment as a major global health player. Yet, the lack of coherence in supporting collective action on global health remains a problem. Global health geopolitics are shifting and China and India have acquired enough power to shape the global health agenda. At the instigation of Germany, health has become a regular topic at Group of Twenty (G20) and G7 meetings – a critical factor during the COVID-19 pandemic. The WHO’s director general frequently states that health is a political choice. Many countries made unfortunate, if not questionable political choices in their responses to COVID-19. But as a matter of fact, they took the wrong turn much earlier when they neglected investments in pandemic preparedness and in the WHO. Countries have the political choice right now to seriously strengthen the WHO, its funding, and its legal power, or to weaken or even destroy one of the most important agencies in the UN system.
Images of Health and Disease: the Example of HIV/AIDS. There are two phases in the history of HIV/AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s. In the first of them, which lasted until the mid-1980s, HIV/AIDS was constructed as a disease of the (sexual) other. The second phase began around 1985 when the focus of AIDS prevention programs gradually shifted from „risk groups“ to „risk behavior“. This transformation came along with a reframing of the sexually active individual as self-reliant and socially responsible. Furthermore, the emergence of the risk discourse was accompanied by an iconography of a healthy and athletic „prevention body“. In the 1990s it increasingly replaced the emaciated „AIDS body“ that had dominated in the early years.
Sepsis and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Challenges and Chances for Developing a Better Health System in Germany. Sepsis is the most serious complication of infectious diseases including patients critically illwith COVID-19. In 2017, sepsis was estimated to affect close to 50 million people and to cause or contribute to 11 million deaths, with over 3 million of those deaths being in children or adolescents.The WHO considers that most deaths from sepsis are preventable and therefore urges all member states to integrate sepsis in their national health strategy. However, this is not yet the case for Germany, although – compared to other western industrial countries – sepsis mortality rates in Germany are very high. The COVID-19 pandemic has presented the world with the most serious health threat in living memory, which until July 2021 resulted in more than 4 million deaths and unprecedented social and economic disruption. It has reminded us that infectious diseases still present a major global health threat. In contrast to the poor recognition of sepsis from other infections, the response to the pandemic has also been unprecedented in most countries in terms of instituting effective public health measures, and the global scientific community has come together to produce robust research evidence and novel vaccines in record time. Thus, a positive legacy for the COVID‑19 pandemic in Germany and around the globe would reduce the global burden of sepsis by making pandemic preparedness, infection prevention and control, sepsis and antimicrobial resistance integral parts of national infection control and management strategies.