1 Health, health care and healthy lifestyle

HEALTH

Our health is possibly the most important thing in our life. It’s important to say that physical and mental health are both very important, so we should do everything to stay healthy physically and mentally.

Everybody in our country has the right to choose a doctor and many people go to one family doctor. At present two types of health facilities operate in this country: state and private ones. Medical care is provided for our citizens from birth to death.

Child-health supervision, children´s diseases

Each of us is looked after even before birth under the scheme called prenatal care which includes medical check-ups before the child is born and then maternity ward services.

Soon after birth each child is vaccinated against such illnesses as tuberculosis (TB), diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, polio and later smallpox. Due to vaccination and better hygiene these illnesses have either disappeared or are not fatal any more.

Each school child is under medical supervision which means that he or she has to undergo a series of preventive medical and dental check-ups where his body is examined, his teeth checked and eyesight tested.

Most common children's diseases - a cold, otitis, measles, mumps, rubeola or chicken-pox.

Illness, at the doctor

If we are not hypochondriacs we try to get over our cold easily by staying in bed, taking pills, keeping warm, sweating, gargling and drinking herbal tea with honey or lemon. But sometimes if a patient is trying to overcome a feverish sickness without staying in bed and curing it properly, he takes a risk, as the illness often leaves very dangerous aftereffects.

If we still feel unwell, we finally decide to see a physician who is called a General Practitioner (GP). Other kinds of doctors: a general practitioner, a dentist, a psychiatrist, a neurologist…

It is better to make an appointment with the doctor in his surgery time (during his office hours) if we want to avoid long waiting in the waiting room which may often be crowded. Then the nurse invites us into the consulting room.

The nurse has to look for our medical record and wants to see our insurance card and then takes our temperature. Then we are ready to enter the surgery (consulting room). The doctor usually asks what the trouble is and then asks us to strip to the waist because they must examine our chest and throat. Then they listen to our lungs and heart and we have to take a deep breath or stop breathing according to his orders. Sometimes they check the blood pressure and feels the pulse, takes the blood count and throat culture or puts urine through lab tests. We have to say how we feel, if we have a headache, a sore throat, a cold, a cough, or if we are sick and hoarse.

Finally, the doctor diagnoses the case and therapy and prescribes a medicine. Most often we suffer from a common infection such as flu, tonsillitis, bronchitis or pneumonia. At the pharmacy (at the chemist's in Britain) we get antibiotics, vitamins, pain relievers and gargle. We can also buy some medicinal herbs to prepare herbal tea. Nowadays many people could be positive for coronavirus. The main symptoms of flu are headache, sore throat and high temperature. The coronavirus´ symptoms are very much the same as the flu, but we could also lose our smell and taste. There are some preventive measures, we have to wear face masks, use disinfection and cover our mouth when we sneeze. We also should avoid crowded places, but we could get coronavirus everywhere (at school, at supermarket, in hospital, …) We can also be vaccinated and that could help us alleviate the symptoms.