Prevention

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Prevention ( Latin praevenire, “to anticipate”, “prevent”) describes measures aimed at reducing risks or attenuating the harmful consequences of disasters or other undesirable situations. The term prevention is used synonymously . Prevention describes the level of willingness and ability of human and material resources as well as structures, communities and organizations to deal with disasters effectively and quickly, achieved through measures taken in advance.

One takes preventive measures z. B. in the following areas: in drug prevention (e.g. protection of non-smokers ), violence prevention and crime prevention , as accident prevention, among other things in the areas of occupational and road safety , in the area of ​​education (see prevention in education ), as preventive fire protection and as crisis prevention in politics and science (e.g. pandemic prevention ).

Prevention is moving more and more into the focus of health and social policy . Prevention is a central field of action in the fields of medicine (see disease prevention ) and dentistry (see prophylaxis in dentistry ).

Delimitations

A distinction can be made between behavior prevention, which is aimed specifically at the actions of individual people, and relationship prevention, which is aimed at the environment and living conditions.

The term is further subdivided according to the starting point within the course of time and the form of alignment. In 1957, the Commission on Chronic Illness introduced a division into primary and secondary prevention, which was soon followed by tertiary, quaternary and primordial prevention. Since the end of the 20th century, a distinction has also been made between programs for universal, selective and indicated prevention. Primary prevention is aimed at all potentially affected people in an untargeted manner and before a specific risk occurs, while primordial prevention is aimed particularly at social risk factors. Secondary prevention refers to programs specifically aimed at groups of people who are already considered to be at risk, tertiary prevention refers to intervention after the occurrence of the event, which is intended to counteract a further deterioration of the respective condition. Quaternary prevention refers to measures to prevent relapse or strategies to avoid unnecessary medical measures. Detached from the temporal dimension related solely to the target group, universal prevention is aimed at the entire population, selective prevention at particularly vulnerable people and indicated prevention at those already affected.

In the theory of the purpose of punishment , a separate distinction is made between general prevention, which affects all members of society equally, such as the general criminal liability of an act, and special prevention, which is aimed at individuals, such as the specific imposition of a penalty .

criticism

A great economic efficiency is ascribed to measures for prevention. Accordingly, there is great interest on the part of politics and business in introducing numerous and far-reaching prevention programs and in some cases making them mandatory. A particular difficulty arises when the costs incurred, the expected benefits and the necessary interference with personal rights have to be weighed against each other.

Prevention paradox

The prevention paradox was first described in 1981 by the epidemiologist Geoffrey Rose . It describes a principle of prevention that the health gain through preventive interventions for people with a high health risk is higher than just the smaller effect for the general population and vice versa.

For example, if a preventive measure is carried out for many people with slightly elevated blood pressure - which represents a low risk of disease - the mortality rate from cardiovascular diseases in the general population can be reduced, even if individuals experience only minor improvements in their health (population strategy). Conversely, the preventive measure does not have a comparably large effect for the population as a whole (high-risk strategy) in the case of a small high-risk group with greatly increased blood pressure, which benefits greatly from the intervention.

In social medicine, balancing prevention between population strategy and high-risk strategy is viewed as the solution to the prevention paradox.

Another understanding of the prevention paradox is the declining acceptance of vaccinations, up to and including open hostility towards vaccinations, with at the same time little or no outbreaks of the disease against which vaccination should be carried out as a precaution. The health risk of the disease is, due to its lack of clinical appearance, not in the consciousness of the population. As a result, paradoxically, despite the success of the preventive measure, there may be a lack of acceptance of the same.

During the COVID-19 pandemic of 2019 and 2020, the term “prevention paradox ” was used by Christian Drosten and others to describe the paradoxical situation of public doubting measures taken by the government to prevent the pandemic from spreading were on the grounds that the virus had not spread as predicted. It was probably only these preventive measures that prevented the spread.

See also

swell

Web links

Wiktionary: Prevention  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Article 4, numbers 3 and 4 of Decision No. 1313/2013 / EU of December 17, 2013 on a Union Civil Protection Mechanism
  2. ^ Geoffrey Rose: Strategy of Prevention: Lessons from Cardiovascular Disease. Br. Med. J. Vol. 282 (1981), pp. 1847-1851.
  3. ↑ a b c Silke Kramer: Prevention paradox. In: Pschyrembel online - pschyrembel.de. Walter de Gruyter GmbH, April 2016, accessed on June 9, 2020 .
  4. ^ WHO : Choosing priority strategies for risk prevention. The world health report. Chapter 6.
  5. ↑ Peter Franzkowiak: Prevention paradox . In: Federal Center for Health Education (Ed.): Bzga.de . April 18, 2018, doi : 10.17623 / BZGA: 224-i094-2.0 ( bzga.de [accessed on May 13, 2020]).
  6. ↑ Paula Schneider: "Prevention Paradox": Drosten sends a warning to all lockdown critics. Focus online, May 2, 2020.
  7. ↑ Laura Spinney: Germany's Covid-19 expert: 'For many, I'm the evil guy crippling the economy' (en-GB) . In: The Guardian , April 26, 2020. Retrieved May 6, 2020.