Key Stakeholder Message: Dr. Safkat Faruk Sezan

Dr. Safkat Faruk Sezan
Jinzhou Medical University, China

Annual city budgets are still dominated by the view that it is a costly financial drain to invest in public health, when it is actually the smartest and highest return investment a city can possibly make, as proven by health economics. The people who appear in the background of every frantic street, local market, factory, bus line, domestic worker, and teacher are real people, parents, street vendors, factory workers, bus drivers, domestic workers, and teachers working every day to keep our urban economies going. But millions of these crucial workers are in squalid informal settlements and poor neighborhoods with little access to clean water, garbage is left uncollected, and polluted air is inhaled with each breath, leaving them continually at risk of avoidable illness.

A disease outbreak in an urban household has consequences that go well beyond just the medical. A single hospital visit or a pricey prescription can destroy years of savings for families, as there are no affordable neighborhood clinics and they are forced to borrow money from informal money-lenders, sell their small tools of trade or remove children from classes to make ends meet. In the most economic sense, this is not just a family matter, it's a silent brake on the overall urban economy. Sick workers lose work time, small businesses lose customers, transportation networks lose time and municipalities lose tax revenue to build better roads and schools. Not taking care of one's health does not save money; it only delays the problem until the little ailment grows into advanced heart disease, serious lung disease or uncontrolled diabetes, which places excessive strain on the ER's and forces huge public spending to address the issue. Health economics is a simple common sense approach, which shows that prevention is far more effective and much cheaper than cure in the crowded tertiary hospitals. For every dollar invested by the municipal authority, development partners, and urban planners in providing clean neighborhood pipes, good sanitation, safe and comfortable public parks, and trusted local health clinics, the city gets a multiple return from the investment in real economic value. It translates to fewer absent days at work, more income for working families, more dollars in neighborhood stores, and huge cuts in government emergency expenses. Ensuring that families, particularly those with working parents, have access to basic, affordable community health coverage is like building a strong foundation of roads, electricity, etc.; it will help keep families on their own and businesses up and running even in the face of economic challenges. If they realize their fever or broken bone won't make them impoverished, they can save, take risks on the business side and educate their children, and build a local boom that lifts the entire city. The world of urban life is impossible to create on the shoulders of a tired and vulnerable workforce, living one day ahead of financial ruin, struggling mere feet from a city's many heat-resistant centers. The time has come for city leaders, finance ministries and development organizations to realize that healthy citizens are not something we can purchase down the stream once our cities are rich, but are the human basis upon which urban wealth and shared progress is possible in the first place.