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What should be medicines main priority: the quality or quantity of life

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What should be medicines main priority: the quality or quantity of life
Should medicine give more priority to the quality or quantity of life?

Historically speaking the quantity and not the quality of healthcare services has been the main priority of developing countries all around the globe since the impact of healthcare services is measured in terms of its effect on mortality. However some people may argue that healthcare services should be directed towards patient satisfaction as outcome measures but when it comes down to life threatening situations I can without doubt say that the quantity of a life is more important than its adversary.

We can’t choose what life may have in store for us or the kind of diseases we may suffer from. We may be genetically disposed to a certain disease or it may be a result of environmental pollution. We can neither fully treat nor overcome it as we will be liable to side effects for the rest of our life but what medicine can and are doing is prolonging life. To them the main concern is not whether a patient will live be able to enjoy the full benefits of life or resume his activities according to his/her previous routine but whether such a person’s life can be saved at all. Whether he/she can open their eyes after an operation however painful it may have been just to see the faces of their family and loved ones. After all is it not true that doctors enter this field to “save lives” as the saying goes and not for any personal comfort. Isn’t this exactly the main aim of every health care officer that prolonging and saving lives should be given more preference if the alternative is in the patients view a short but happy life or in other words one in which they have become resigned to their fate.

For example people suffering from cancer may be treated by palliative chemotherapy which means that though the tumor is not completely removed the life of the patient has been prolonged. And though there are many effects of chemotherapy, yet if the person may live to see another day then doesn’t this
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