The Value of Health in Ukraine: from Declaration to Implementation

Abstract

Health is a universally recognized value and a prerequisite for a full life, work and social realization of person, the satisfaction of material and spiritual needs, his economic, political, scientific and cultural activities. The aim of the article is to demonstrate the place of health and healthcare in the hierarchy of universal values based on modern approaches to the essence of the value of health and the laws of Ukraine; to characterize the level of compliance of the real preventive acti vity with its proclaimed value based on the results of various sociological studies. The method of content analysis (to study modern views on the value of health and how it’s reflected in the national legislative field) and the sociological method (to assess the level of correspondence between the declared value of health and real activities aimed at preserving and strengthening it) are used. A comparative analysis of several population surveys (their fragments) is carried out, which concerned the importance of the category of health in the list of life values, the priority of state budget expenditures, understanding of European values, etc. The surveys were performed in Ukraine and abroad. The results of a study on the medical activity of the economically active population (aged 18-69) of the Chernivtsi region and a survey of the working age population (aged 18-59) in the Dnipropetrovsk region are analyzed. We also investigate the research data of the preventive activity of primary care doctors in the field of promoting a healthy lifestyle and eliminating risk factors for major non-communicable diseases. Parallels are drawn with other sociological studies. The article illustrates the difference between the proclamation by the Constitution of Ukraine of the highest social value of human life and health, and the priority of healthcare as a direction of state activity by Fundamentals of the Legislation of Ukraine on Healthcare; the tasks set for the implementation of the country’s Sustainable Development Goals and the distribution of expenditures of the state budget of Ukraine for the current 2021 year (the volume and share allocated to healthcare). The paper proves the existence of a socially important problem of a significant discrepancy between the degree of value of health proclaimed by people and their actual activities to preserve and strengthen it. The article substantiates the need to reflect the concept of the value of health in the social policy of the country as a whole and the policy in the field of Public Health in particular, in everyday medical practice, primarily through the real priority of the preventive component. Continuity over time with a change of governments, stability and sufficiency of resources provided for its implementation, and the development of a patient-centered system are defined as necessary conditions for the implementation of the concept of the value of health