• Journal of agricultural medicine and community health
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.5-9
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• 1976

The categories of national health problems may be mainly divided into health promotion, problems of diseases, and population-economic problems which are indirectly related to health. Of them, the problems of diseases will be exclusively dealt with this speech. Rurality and Disease Problems There are many differences between rural and urban areas. In general, indicators of rurality are small size of towns, dispersion of the population, remoteness from urban centers, inadequacy of public transportation, poor communication, inadequate sanitation, poor housing, poverty, little education lack of health personnels and facilities, and in-accessibility to health services. The influence of such conditions creates, directly or indirectly, many problems of diseases in the rural areas. Those art the occurrence of preventable diseases, deterioration and prolongation of illness due to loss of chance to get early treatment, decreased or prolonged labour force loss, unnecessary death, doubling of medical cost, and economic loss. Some Considerations of Innovative Approach The followings art some considerations of innovative approaches to the problems of diseases in the rural Korea. 1. It would be essential goal of the innovative approaches that the damage and economic loss due to diseases will be maintained to minimum level by minimizing the absolute amount of the diseases, and by moderating the fee for medical cares. The goal of the minimization of the disease amount may be achieved by preventive services and early treatment, and the goal of moderating the medical fee may be achieved by lowering the prime cost and by adjusting the medical fees to reasonable level. 2. Community health service or community medicine will be adopted as a innovative means to disease problems. In this case, a community is defined as an unit area where supply and utilization of primary service activities can be accomplished within a day. The essential nature o the community health service should be such activities as health promotion, preventive measures, medical care, and rehabilitation performing efficiently through the organized efforts of the residents in a community. Each service activity should cover all members of the residents in a community in its plan and performance. The cooperation of the community peoples in one of the essential elements for success of the service program, The motivations of their cooperative mood may be activated through several ways: when the participation of the residents in service program of especially the direct participation of organized cooperation of the area leaders art achieved through a means of health education: when the residents get actual experience of having received the benefit of good quality services; and when the health personnels being armed with an idealism that they art working in the areas to help health problems of the residents, maintain good human relationships with them. For the success of a community health service program, a personnel who is in charge of leadership and has an able, a sincere and a steady characters seems to be required in a community. The government should lead and support the community health service programs of the nation under the basis of results appeared in the demonstrative programs so as to be carried out the programs efficiently. Moss of the health problems may be treated properly in the community levels through suitable community health service programs but there might be some problems which art beyond their abilities to be dealt with. To solve such problems each community health service program should be under the referral systems which are connected with health centers, hospitals, and so forth. 3. An approach should be intensively groped to have a physician in each community. The shortage of physicians in rural areas is world-wide problem and so is the Korean situation. In the past the government has initiated a system of area-limited physician, coercion, and a small scale of scholarship program with unsatisfactory results. But there might be ways of achieving the goal by intervice, broadened, and continuous approaches. There will be several ways of approach to motivate the physicians to be settled in a rural community. They are, for examples, to expos the students to the community health service programs during training, to be run community health service programs by every health or medical schools and other main medical facilities, communication activities and advertisement, desire of community peoples to invite a physician, scholarship program, payment of satisfactory level, fulfilment of military obligation in case of a future draft, economic growth and development of rural communities, sufficiency of health and medical facilities, provision of proper medical care system, coercion, and so forth. And, hopefully, more useful reference data on the motivations may be available when a survey be conducted to the physicians who are presently engaging in the rural community levels. 4. In communities where the availability of a physician is difficult, a trial to use physician extenders, under certain conditions, may be considered. The reason is that it would be beneficial for the health of the residents to give them the remedies of primary medical care through the extenders rather than to leave their medical problems out of management. The followings are the conditions to be considered when the physician extenders are used: their positions will be prescribed as a temporary one instead of permanent one so as to allow easy replacement of the position with a physician applicant; the extender will be under periodic direction and supervision of a physician, and also referral channel will be provided: legal constraints will be placed upon the extenders primary care practice, and the physician extenders will used only under the public medical care system. 5. For the balanced health care delivery, a greater investment to the rural areas is needed to compensate weak points of a rurality. The characteristics of a rurality has been already mentioned. The objective of balanced service for rural communities to level up that of urban areas will be hard to achieve without greater efforts and supports. For example, rural communities need mobile powers more than urban areas, communication network is extremely necessary at health delivery facilities in rural areas as well as the need of urban areas, health and medical facilities in rural areas should be provided more substantially than those of urban areas to minimize, in a sense, the amount of patient consultation and request of laboratory specimens through referral system of which procedures are more troublesome in rural areas, and more intensive control measures against communicable diseases are needed in rural areas where greater numbers of cases are occurred under the poor sanitary conditions.

• Clinical and Experimental Reproductive Medicine
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.27-36
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• 1975

The success of the family planning program in Korea is reflected in the decrease in the growth rate from 3.0% in 1962 to 2.0% in 1971, and in the decrease in the fertility rate from 43/1,000 in 1960 to 29/1,000 in 1970. However, it would be erroneous to attribute these reductions entirely to the family planning program. Other socio-economic factors, such as the increasing age at marriage and the increasing use of induced abortions, definitely had an impact on the lowered growth and fertility rate. Despite the relative success of the program to data in meeting its goals, there is no room for complacency. Meeting the goal of a further reduction in the population growth rate to 1.3% by 1981 is a much more difficult task than any one faced in the past. Not only must fertility be lowered further, but the size of the target population itself will expand tremendously in the late seventies; due to the post-war baby boom of the 1950's reaching reproductive ages. Furthermore, it is doubtful that the age at marriage will continue to rise as in the past or that the incidence of induced abortion will continue to increase. Consequently, future reductions in fertility will be more dependent on the performance of the national family planning program, with less assistance from these non-program factors. This paper will describe various approaches to help to the solution of these current problems. 1. PRACTICE RATE IN FAMILY PLANNING In 1973, the attitude (approval) and knowledge rates were quite high; 94% and 98% respectively. But a large gap exists between that and the actual practice rate, which is only 3695. Two factors must be considered in attempting to close the KAP-gap. The first is to change social norms, which still favor a larger family, increasing the practice rate cannot be done very quickly. The second point to consider is that the family planning program has not yet reached all the eligible women. A 1973 study determineded that a large portion, 3096 in fact, of all eligible women do not want more children, but are not practicing family planning. Thus, future efforts to help close the KAP-gap must focus attention and services on this important large group of potential acceptors. 2. CONTINUATION RATES Dissatisfaction with the loop and pill has resulted in high discontinuation rates. For example, a 1973 survey revealed that within the first six months initial loop acceptance. nearly 50% were dropouts, and that within the first four months of inital pill acceptance. nearly 50% were dropouts. These discontinuation rates have risen over the past few years. The high rate of discontinuance obviously decreases the contraceptive effectiveness. and has resulted in many unwanted births which is directly related to the increase of induced abortions. In the future, the family planning program must emphasize the improved quality of initial and follow-up services. rather than more quantity, in order to insure higher continuation rates and thus more effective contraceptive protection. 3. INDUCED ABORTION As noted earlier. the use of induced abortions has been increase yearly. For example, in 1960, the average number of abortions was 0.6 abortions per women in the 15-44 age range. By 1970. that had increased to 2 abortions per women. In 1966. 13% of all women between 15-44 had experienced at least one abortion. By 1971, that figure jumped to 28%. In 1973 alone, the total number of abortions was 400,000. Besides the ever incre.sing number of induced abortions, another change has that those who use abortions have shifted since 1965 to include- not. only the middle class, but also rural and low-income women. In the future. in response to the demand for abortion services among rural and low-income w~men, the government must provide and support abortion services for these women as a part of the national family planning program. 4. TARGET SYSTIi:M Since 1962, the nationwide target system has been used to set a target for each method, and the target number of acceptors is then apportioned out to various sub-areas according to the number of eligible couples in each area. Because these targets are set without consideration for demographic factors, particular tastes, prejudices, and previous patterns of acceptance in the area, a high discontinuation rate for all methods and a high wastage rate for the oral pill and condom results. In the future. to alleviate these problems of the methodbased target system. an alternative. such as the weighted-credit system, should be adopted on a nation wide basis. In this system. each contraceptive method is. assigned a specific number of points based upon the couple-years of protection (CYP) provided by the method. and no specific targets for each method are given. 5. INCREASE OF STERILIZA.TION TARGET Two special projects. the hospital-based family planning program and the armed forces program, has greatly contributed to the increasing acceptance in female and male sterilization respectively. From January-September 1974, 28,773 sterilizations were performed. During the same time in 1975, 46,894 were performed; a 63% increase. If this trend continues, by the end of 1975. approximately 70,000 sterilizations will have been performed. Sterilization is a much better method than both the loop and pill, in terms of more effective contraceptive protection and the almost zero dropout rate. In the future, the. family planning program should continue to stress the special programs which make more sterilizations possible. In particular, it should seek to add the laparoscope techniques to facilitate female sterilization acceptance rates. 6. INCREASE NUMBER OF PRIVATE ACCEPTORS Among the current family planning users, approximately 1/3 are in the private sector and thus do not- require government subsidy. The number of private acceptors increases with increasing urbanization and economic growth. To speed this process, the government initiated the special hospital based family planning program which is utilized mostly by the private sector. However, in the future, to further hasten the increase of private acceptors, the government should encourage doctors in private practice to provide family planning services, and provide the contraceptive supplies. This way, those do utilize the private medical system will also be able to receive family planning services and pay for it. Another means of increasing the number of private acceptors, IS to greatly expand the commercial outlets for pills and condoms beyond the existing service points of drugstores, hospitals, and health centers. 7. IE&C PROGRAM The current preferred family size is nearly twice as high as needed to achieve a stable poplation. Also, a strong boy preference hinders a small family size as nearly all couples fuel they must have at least one or more sons. The IE&C program must, in the future, strive to emphasize the values of the small family and equality of the sexes. A second problem for the IE&C program to work. with in the: future is the large group of people who approves family planning, want no more children, but do not practice. The IE&C program must work to motivate these people to accept family planning And finally, for those who already practice, an IE&C program in the future must stress continuation of use. The IE&C campaign, to insure highest effectiveness, should be based on a detailed factor analysis of contraceptive discontinuance. In conclusion, Korea faces a serious unfavorable sociodemographic situation- in the future unless the population growth rate can be curtailed. And in the future, the decrease in fertility will depend solely on the family planning program, as the effect of other socio-economic factors has already been maximumally felt. A second serious factor to consider is the increasing number of eligible women due to the 1950's baby boom. Thus, to meet these challenges, the program target must be increased and the program must improve the effectiveness of its current activities and develop new programs.