Health care in Poland today and in the next decade

Abstract

Forecasts of demographic and health trends indicate a slower pace of global population growth in the coming decades. In industrially developed countries, the measure of improvement in people's health is the increase in life expectancy. In Poland, it is over 73 for men and over 82 for women. This increase is compensated by the decreasing fertility rate, which in European countries is below 1.6. In Europe, by 2030 the percentage of people over 65 years of age will increase to 23.8%, and in Poland the number of people over 65 will exceed 8 million. In the coming decade, the hierarchy of Poles' health problems will be similar to the current one. Almost half of the deaths are caused by cardiovascular diseases, mainly heart attacks and strokes. Cancer is and will remain the second cause of death among men and the first among women. Traffic accidents and injuries will become an increasing health and economic problem. Improving mental health is an urgent matter, and young people are a group that particularly needs help. The priority is to prevent the rapidly increasing epidemic of overweight and obesity, especially in children. The next decade will see continuously improved diagnostic and treatment methods. 

More and more often, drugs will be delivered directly to pathologically changed organs. The possibilities of non-invasive surgical procedures will increase, which will play a special role in cerebrovascular surgery. Despite advances in mapping the human genome and understanding the role of different genes in specific diseases, gene therapy is not expected to be an available treatment option in the next decade. Understanding the mechanisms of brain operation should allow for maintaining intellectual abilities for many years, restoring lost memory and further progress in the treatment of mental illnesses. It will be possible to restore weakened hearing, vision, mental abilities and memory. The challenge will be to provide services to the rapidly growing number of older people and to make up for the neglect resulting from the lack of well-functioning disease prevention programs and to strengthen health - a condition for maintaining a larger number of seniors in the professionally active group. A big challenge is the lack of concern among our compatriots for their own health - avoiding addictions and following the principles of a healthy lifestyle. The recently passed Public Health Act should give a new impetus and create a platform for actions to improve and strengthen the health of Poles.