{"id":233,"date":"2015-09-11T22:46:31","date_gmt":"2015-09-11T22:46:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/idealhealthcare.net\/?p=233"},"modified":"2016-12-31T15:01:53","modified_gmt":"2016-12-31T15:01:53","slug":"lessons-from-the-animal-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/idealhealthcare.net\/index.php\/2015\/09\/11\/lessons-from-the-animal-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Lessons from The Animal World"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Abstract<\/p>
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It is well-known that in many countries, present healthcare systems simply do not do their intended job. The dichotomy between purpose and function still evades human political economies. How then can one make progress towards restructuring healthcare systems?<\/p>
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This post argues that the answer may lie in the animal kingdom that has faced the vicissitudes of nature on earth for several millennia more than humans. Simple principles of an ideal healthcare system are derived from the organization and behavior of animals in the wild. The profundity of these principles is evident in the time-tested survival of an entire species.

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Lessons we can\u00a0learn from the animal world<\/h1>\n

Where do we begin when we want to make extreme changes? If a single physician wants to improve her practice in some measure, she may look across the street at other practice models successful in that measure. When a hospital wants to improve its performance in some measure it may look across the region at other hospitals that have been\u00a0successful in that measure. If a country wants to improve its healthcare system in certain measures, it may look across borders or oceans at other countries that have been successful in implementing those measures. But what do we do if we want to identify me\"Sickasures of success first and then define an ideal healthcare system for all<\/em> human beings and figure out how to implement it? We cannot look across the stars to another planet. However, we do have other options. We can look at other species that live on this planet and see what they are doing for their healthcare and see if there are any lessons we can learn from them. Let us begin with the animal kingdom.\u00a0That is one approach to making extreme changes.<\/p>\n

Our planet is a beautiful globe that we time-share, cohabit and symbiose (a valid denominal verb formation!) with other life forms. In fact, there are an estimated 8.7 million different forms of life (Mora C, Tittensor DP, Adl S, Simpson AGB, Worm B (2011) How Many Species Are There on Earth and in the Ocean? PLoS Biol<\/em> 9(8): e1001127). Brian Tomasik’s study<\/a>\u00a0has estimated the number of animals inhabiting Earth to be about 20 Quintillion which 20 Billion Billion. So the human population of about seven\u00a0Billion is an extremely small fraction of the population of the animal kingdom (less than\u00a0\"4*10^{-8}\"\u00a0percent of the total animal population). Many animal species have been living for several millennia before any human ancestor even set foot on Earth. It may therefore be reasonable for humans to look at their cohabitors and neighbours to see how they manage their healthcare needs. Perhaps there may be some lessons to be learned from the much more numerous, hardier and longer surviving species of animals. What do they do that enables them to survive in the wild, remain healthy and efficiently propagate their species? It turns out that animals have been studying medicine and the art of healthcare longer than humans have lived in this planet.<\/p>\n

God gave unto the animals a wisdom past our power to see:
\nEach knows innately how to live
\nWhich we must learn laboriously.<\/em><\/p>\n

- Margaret Atwood<\/h2><\/div><\/div>