The medicine industry has remarkably revolutionized the management and control of infectious diseases

The medicine industry has remarkably revolutionized the management and control of infectious diseases

The medicine industry has remarkably revolutionized the management and control of infectious diseases. Chronic diseases, including cardiovascular diseases, stroke, and cancer have become the major causes of death as the lifespan is extended. The burden of disease has changed and altered the applied medical approaches and created new problems for healthcare providers. In the past, medical care was decided by doctors and hospitals for the coverage of the most visible diseases and symptoms. Medicine started becoming a successfully profitable business in the 1900s, and advancements in technology gave physicians a wide-array of the medical armory to treat patients as organ transplantation, improved cancer treatment, cardiac bypass, and new families of drugs like immunizations and antibiotics were developed (Conrad & Leiter, 2003).

The medical industry has taken dramatic steps in improving healthcare throughout the world, with its corporate stakeholders playing an instrumental role. The challenges to international health have immensely shifted from 1950 to 2000. In the 1950s, the medical industry had placed very high expectations for global cooperation through the United Nations. Recently, the UN has faced difficulties with the domination of G8 countries in global policy and collaboration and called for regional integration to convert systems initially developed in the European Union into African ownership and stimulate renaissance. Continued integration between the systems in different regions has stimulated progress against infectious diseases including the Ebola epidemic in 2014-2015. National healthcare systems in developing nations remain insufficiently equipped to offer quality healthcare services (Bayne & Woolcock, 2011).

With the success of medicine came

some obvious problems, especially involving the emergence of chronic health

problems, inequalities in health outcomes, the costs of care, and access to

care. Medical professionalization has been associated with numerous benefits,

but it has also developed industry with little public accountability. The last

two decades have seen an increase in the corporatization of medicine, including

the increased influence of insurance companies over healthcare providers and

the rise in for-profit medicine by pharmaceutical companies (Leinster, 2011).

Corporate stakeholders and their response to issues

The medical industry is comprised of

shareholders including insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies,

employers, physicians, patients, and the government. Insurance companies sell coverage

plans to patients either directly or through intermediaries in the government or

employer. The insurance companies then pay renumeration to pharmaceutical companies

through governmental drug-benefit plans and insurance. Pharmaceuticals are

involved with the development and marketing of medications prescribed by

physicians to treat patients. The employers provide their employees with health

insurance coverage with varying deductibles and co-pays. Patients are the

recipients of healthcare, while physicians are healthcare providers. The

government usually subsidizes the healthcare for the poor, disabled, and

elderly and ensuring that the corporate stakeholders stick to regulations (Shore,

2011).

The relationship between the major

stakeholders in the healthcare industry is complicated, especially due to the

two corporate stakeholders: insurance companies and pharmaceutical firms. Being

publicly owned corporations on the stock exchange, they have the primary aim of

making a profit and maximizing their shareholder’s wealth. This aspect has, at

times, inconvenienced patients as they are subjected to unreasonable price

raises.

The insurance industry has had growing

premiums and strict demands that have barred many people from benefitting from

health insurance. Though the insurance companies are mainly driven by profit,

their service nature should not be fixated on profit, and this proclivity has

incommoded people facing financial hardships. Insurance companies have faced

criticism for not balancing their respective responsibilities towards both

patients and shareholders. Usually, the companies are encouraged to focus more

on profitability rather than affordability by quarterly reports. They then

adopt tight regulations, including stance against pre-existing conditions, so

that they can only select the most healthy individuals. These patients do not

use costly procedures compared to those with chronic diseases; hence healthcare

is reduced to a revenue-centered industry that prevents needy patients from

receiving treatment due to their unfortunate financial situations (Shore, 2011).

Pharmaceutical companies perform a

considerable role in the medical industry as many patients depend on their

products. Recently, the prices for particular drugs have been rising, and the

industry has not set caps to ensure they do not reach extravagant prices. At

times, pharmaceutical companies have argued that they need to charge high rates

to cover costs in research and development, which is overstated. Many scholars

have acknowledged, at the very least, that pharmaceutical companies have a duty

to practice fair marketing and be honest. Paradoxically, pharmaceutical

companies have stuck to a profit-based marketing strategy (Shore, 2011).

A trend that has significantly

picked in the pharmaceutical companies is a change in their drug marketing.

Previously, the companies employed experienced and knowledgeable pharmacists

who objectively educated physicians on the benefits and risks of certain

medications. However, presently, the use of sales-persons with no formal market

training and use them to establish social relationships where physicians are

offered incentives for the prescription of their products.

The year 2015 had two startling

cases where companies acquired extremely important drugs and spectacularly

raised their price level. It became tough for insurance companies and patients

to purchase them. On February 10, 2015, Valeant Pharmaceuticals bought the

rights to Isuprel and Nitropress and immediately raised their price by 525% and

212% respectively. The life-saving heart drugs are relied on by a large number

of people and having a monopoly over the drugs, the company decided to get as

much money as they would from the patients per each tablet. Later the same

year, in September, Turing Pharmaceuticals secured the rights to market

Daraprim and in August, Vecamyl. Turing Pharmaceuticals then elevated the price

level of Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 per tablet, a 5555% raise. Both companies

moderated their prices after public outcry and made it more possible for

hospitals and individuals without insurance to buy the drugs. The government

has been instrumental in checking rogue CEOs of pharmaceutical companies, as in

this case, both CEOs were called on to testify before congressional

fact-finding committees that led to the collapse of their companies in the

stock exchange (Jeffrey, 2012).

Pharmaceutical companies have

exploited patients for profits with the argument that their responsibility is

to increase profits and wealth for their shareholders. The classical economic

school perspective asserts that entrepreneurs should not be concerned with

social issues whose resolution is a responsibility of the government and

legislation. However, pharmaceutical companies have taken a crude shortcut to

maximize profit without conforming to society’s rules, those embodied in law or

ethical customs. The Friedman’s entire statement has three categories:

economic, legal, and ethical. It has also been deployed in the prosecution of

pharmaceutical CEOs when federal authorities have evidence of fraud from their

trade.

The role of the industry in its social, economic, and political setting

The need for local and international cooperation have been heightened in the modern world as the risks associated with global trends in communication, travel, and trade can only be effectively addressed with networks transcending traditional national borders. Risks highlighted include infectious diseases, human trafficking, international drug smuggling, environmental pollution, and displacement of populations. These problems cannot be solved individually by different countries. The medical industry has been involved in global action for communicable and non-communicable diseases, international financial architecture, trade, and environmental concerns.

The medical industry has been

successful in alleviating most diseases and extending the average life span,

especially in developed economies. However, African countries have been faced

with more problems due to the worsened trade conditions, poor governance,

conflict, and weakened public health systems. Therefore, there have been vast

inequalities between and within states. Development assistance is required

since the world is becoming increasingly interdependent, and the effects of

ill-health and poverty are not confined to the traditional country borders. To

combat international health issues and organize with strategic efforts,

international communities comprising of countries throughout the world have

developed health agencies.

The UN’s main health agency is the

World Health Organization (WHO), whose roles are the direction and coordination

of international health work. However, other players have challenged and

criticized its activities, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,

UNAIDS, and the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria. These agencies have

been invented in the past decades, which proves that international cooperation

is increasing rapidly.

Ecological and natural resources

Linkages can be

found between global forces and individual tragedies in specific ecologies that

necessitate medical attention. For instance, children in Sierra Leone have been

in the past victims of the global diamond trade and suffered arm amputations.

Massacres in DRC have wiped away entire communities have been viewed as a

misfortunate of living in the world’s largest tantalum source. Tantalum is used

to make mobile phone chips, and it is the abundance of such minerals that have

turned habitats rich in primary resources to a survival burden to the immediate

population.

Climate change research also

indicates how events occurring in one place can result in disease and death in

areas far away. Climate change, resulting mainly from activities in most

industrial countries, will have effects including landslides, floods,

landslides in susceptible regions, and also change the distribution of

infectious disease vectors. The application of these links into the healthcare

framework has needed the input of new skill that draws from a wide range of

disciplines, many of which may not lie in the conventional public health

portfolio.

For this purpose, international

cooperation has crossed not only national boundaries but also disciplinary

frontiers. This strategy will enable the already adopted international

cooperation that permits the diagnosis of problems, including appropriate

surveillance systems that gather data and demonstrate it to visibility. At the

moment, there is a lot of data that goes unrecorded and is thereby invisible.

These developments will help develop teams that undertake the analysis of world

regions where populations are most vulnerable and research capacity weakest.

Liberia experienced problems with

‘conflict timber’ in 2000 when rebel leader Charles Taylor, elected president

in 1997, changed the law to allow him unlimited exploitation of Liberia’s

natural resources. The president, together with illegal entrepreneurs accustomed

to transnational crime, continued to destroy rainforests. As they cut down

trees, they enhanced the population’s access to wildlife, which were hunted to

decimation from 20000-30000 as civil clashes raged on.

To avoid these issues, the medical

industry has undertaken campaigns highlighting the harmful effects of illegal

trade, and the government has taken a complementary social harm-approach. One

of the agents for this calamity, Gus van Kouwenhoven was put to trial in the

Netherlands (Sollund, 2008).

Social

issues

The medical industry has adopted a

social problem approach to health and healthcare, which assumes that health and

illness are at least partly socially produced and that serious social problems

may accompany healthcare; hence it is essential always to improve practice,

which is not an unfettered good. Therefore, the industry has invested in

understanding the development of health problems in the social and physical

environment. This has been instrumental in environmentally and occupationally induced

diseases like asthma and black lung diseases among miners (Evidence-based

practice).

Social environments have been linked

to health and illness; hence healthcare givers focus on the patient as a locus

of intervention by considering social factors such as environment and

inequality, which can be the primary cause of a disease. The concern has been

transformed into a means of intervention in the social environment to promote

health and prevent disease. For instance, the current asthma treatment standards

emphasize the significance of controlling triggers and irritants in the

environment and educating patients of safe-care in this regard.

With public health perspectives, the

healthcare industry has conducted successful lifestyle and behavior

interventions such as combating HIV/AIDS with needle exchanges and safer sex,

and obesity and cardiovascular diseases with diet and exercise. The medical

industry tends to respond to social issues aligning with medical-specific

approaches through interventions in the social structures as a way of

treatment. However, the medical industry has failed to adequately reach

populations in third world countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa.

It is estimated that by 2009, the

number of people living with HIV/AIDS was 33.3 million, 2.6 million people

contracted the infection, and 2 million people died. There has been a disparity

in the distribution of global HIV infections, and 22.5 million of the infected

people are in Africa, which is 68 percent of the infected global population.

Only 10 percent of the infected individuals are receiving treatment, though the

need for treatment is expected to increase dramatically (Institute of Medicine,

2011).

President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS

Relief (PEPFAR), launched in 2003, established the US’s position as a leader in

expanding the care and treatment in the fight against AIDs in Africa. The

United States forged an extra-ordinary global response to mobilize donor and

private sector resources for this cause that though significantly rewarding,

was challenged by the anticipated expansion of the epidemic (Institute of

Medicine, 2011).

The industry’s social problem

approach involves principles that include the individual right to access

quality medical care. Concerns regarding limited access due to financial and

other barriers have been reflected in public debates over universal health

insurance and emphasized a need to eliminate the large population of uninsured

people. Social inequities are reflected in healthcare, and a key finding of social

research on disease is the inverse relationship between social class and

illness. Lower social levels are affected by higher illness rates, while higher

social classes are affected by lower illness rates.

The US population has unevenly

distributed access to healthcare, and about forty-four million Americans have

no health insurance, while more are underinsured. People with higher incomes

are more likely to be insured, and only 9 percent of people whose income is 200

percent or more above the poverty line are not insured compared to the 34

percent individuals living in poverty. While the UK has had some form of

universal healthcare, the US only has a mixture of public financing for

individuals who are poor, disabled, or elderly, and a private system that

offers insurance covers through employment. Insurance does not entirely cover

all costs, especially in long-term care and prescription drug costs.

Technology has come into conflict

with the traditional approach of establishing and disseminating knowledge through

the publication of research results. In many science disciplines, notably

physics, the instant online publication of results yet to be peer-reviewed enables

their critical assessment and is commonly practiced. It is expected that there

will be difficulties as published results in disciplines such as biomedical

research may follow the trend and result in the publication of results that

have not been reviewed. However, medicine has managed to strictly restrict the

publication of papers that are already peer-reviewed (Duquenoy, 2008).

Domestic

and international ethics

Contemporary global health extends

further than the diagnosis and treatment of diseases since it explores the

cultural, political, and social factors to an individual’s wellbeing as opposed

to the mere absence of infirmity. The medical industry has strived to promote

universal human rights and campaigned for global health by acknowledging and

integrating diversity. It also continues to encompass an inquiry into the

influences that separate disadvantaged and disenfranchised people from the

effluent and empowered people. This way, the industry monitors how factors such

as healthcare rights, displacement, environmental dynamics, discrimination,

inequality, and education shape personal wellbeing (Weinberg, 2010).

Physicians are motivated by a duty

to care and the body of healthcare providers. Confronted by health inequalities

in different regions, physicians have collaborated and worked out ways to

resolve challenges posed by resource-limited settings. All the personnel

involved in health-care provision learning have a duty to ensure that developed

global health programs uphold professional standards, are responsive to local

needs and are undertaken with safeguards to protect the patient and caregiver

(Weinberg, 2010).

The medical industry has developed

responsive and sustainable partnerships between resource-limited settings and

academic medical centres in the developed world. Research ethics is also

instrumental where researchers engage in research work in settings that are

limited in resources. Researchers reconcile their roles as educators,

clinicians, and researchers amidst the challenges of upholding their

beneficence and justice principles (Weinberg, 2010).

Rating

of the industry’s overall social responsiveness and its accomplishments in this

area

The medical fraternity has taken up

its inherent quest for the greatest good by seamlessly integrating joint

responses that have increased the highest number of potential survivors. The

medical industry acknowledges the effects of globalization that have resulted

in an interconnected and economically dependent world. Effective collaboration

between different states has been made possible by fundamental education and training

to facilitate disaster preparedness and understand environmental and social

influences on health of different populations.

The modern world has experienced social distress and calamities in the wake of disasters such as Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the Pakistan Earthquake, and the Indonesian Tsunami. Accordingly, the medical industry has adopted an international-accepted standardized response to emergencies (Cummings & Stikova, 2007). The American Medical Association (AMA) has provided leadership in disaster management by providing education and training programs in standardized disaster preparedness. These programs have targeted a wide scope of disaster response personnel. The international medical community encouraged collaboration with the National Disaster Life Support Foundation (NDLSF) in the establishment of global standards for disaster education and training. NDLSF was developed by AMA leading academic institutions including leading academic institutions, the Medical College of Georgia, and the Medical College of Georgia (Olivier, 2019)

The institution has developed all-inclusive, nationally homogenous, mass casualty all-hazards education and training programs. The programs target healthcare providers and associated non-medical personnel to achieve measurable improvement in disaster readiness to a pool of healthcare providers. With a foundation in disaster preparedness training and education underway in the USA, an initiative is now formally establishing a consortium of domestic and international stakeholder groups. This is a crucial step in meeting local and global preparedness and response (Jeffrey, 2012).

Rating

of the industry in relation to the Saint Leo University core values

The medical industry encompasses the

Saint Leo University core values. The medical industry has guaranteed

efficiency by applying evidence-based practice and improvement that emphasizes

the need for efficient, safe, and effective care. It has adopted initiatives

such as scientific engagement and study improvement that promote personal

development. By applying the social approach model, the healthcare industry has

built a patient-centered system that upholds the identity and respect of the

patient and integrates their preferences and opinion into the treatment. The

industry has also encouraged and worked collaboratively with federal

initiatives that ensure accountability and respect for governance to propagate

responsible stewardship. The cohesive interconnectedness of the medical

industry throughout the world demonstrates the value of community in its

wholesome diversity of population and resource (Rider et al., 2015).

However, the industry is plagued by

poor integrity, especially considering the conduct of insurance and

pharmaceutical companies. In the medical field, integrity can be considered to

be the relationship between professionalism and medical ethics. The widespread

issues of integrity have mainly been relevant within the corporate

stakeholders. Some practitioners, due to poor professional judgment, have been

colluded with inappropriately marketing pharmacists to mis-administer drugs.

In

summation, the medical industry has a sustainable structure among the physician

stakeholders- healthcare providers- on account of evidence-based practice and

firm ethical grounds. However, it is troubled by corporate stakeholders who,

despite being necessary for the provision of healthcare services, are more

profit-driven and tend to lack or loosen social responsibility to evade higher

costs of operation. Most of the time, controlling the actions of the corporate

stakeholders has been left for the judiciary and legislation. Meanwhile, the

medical industry has depended on its international health agencies and strong

international and interdisciplinary cooperation between different nations to

effectively combat new and emerging infections and calamities after disasters.