Health

A CRITICISM OF THE DEFINITION OF HEALTH AS PRESENTED BY THE W.H.O.

Health has been a concept so many individuals,groups and organizations have struggled to give a suitable definition too,
there have been series of dispute and argument as regards which definition is the most apt, however moot most people have found the definitions of others quite incomplete or inadequate,the most general and universally accepted
definition was the one proposed by the WHO.The definition has been subjected to scrutiny by various critics and other rival
organizations, who saw it fit to point out the flaws in the definition.
What then is this definition that has caused soo much argument between the demography of well learned individuals:The WHO
defined health as A state of complete physical,mental and social well being and not merely the absence of diseases and
infirmity.
At first sight one would be beguiled by the definition as to the point of been oblivious of the very errs within the very capsule of
its meaning.Lets take for a start, the aspect of physical well being.Considering the world demography today one would observe that
quite a percentage of it is either maimed in one way or the other, lets rivet our attention to the definition once again and note this:"
complete physical....well being" now, before one can assert that an individual is in a state of complete physical well being,it would
mean that such an individual has every part of his physical being functioning to a hundred percent effectiveness. Then, do we infer that
the physically challenged are not healthy? the fact that an individual is blind, or has a limb or an arm, does not make him any less healthier
than a person who is physically whole.Now let us imagine a society free of the physically challenged, then we would talk about individual
potential under the context of physical well being.To say that someone who is not physically challenged has a complete physical well beign is
to say that the person's potential capacity and physical fitness are efficiently maximized, and this is however not possible because inequality
abounds in the individual capabilities and the only set of people who would meet the standard would be people who are subjected to effective
training and exercises for example athletes, boxers, wrestlers to name a few.This however implies that health under the context of complete
physical well being is unobtainable by the majority in the society and this would also contradict the fact that health is a universal basic right
for everybody.
"Complete... mental and social well being", to infuse mental and social well being into the definition is to state that happiness and
emotional stability are the criteria for selecting those that are healthy in the society. We then ask ourselves, are the happy and emotional
stress-free ones the only healthy people amongst us?, there have been cases of people with severe cases of terminal diseases as cancer,HIV/AIDS
e.t.c who live happily till d very point of death, and also a case of an individual who was addicted to smoking, who after he was weaned from his addiction
stated that he felt better but not happier. This then presents us with a paradox: One can be happy and not be in good health and vice versa .
Finally the concepts that serve as the very cause of the flaws of the definition by the WHO is the fact that it tries to maximize various variables
[physical,mental and social well being] which is not possible. and also the inclusion of "completeness" under the concept of health, for we all
know that there is nothing which is satisfactory or "okay" to a hundred percent degree, so to speak of completeness would invariable be a
disguise for saying good health is unattainable by any individual.