Health Care
Health care, or healthcare, is the prevention, treatment, and management of illness, and the preservation of health through services offered by the medical, dental, nursing, and allied health professions. Health care embraces all the goods and services designed to promote health, including “preventive, curative and palliative interventions, whether directed to individuals or to populations”.[1] The organised provision of such services may constitute a health care system. This can include specific governmental organizations such as, in the UK, the National Health Service or a cooperation across the National Health Service and Social Services as in Shared Care. Before the term health care became popular, English-speakers referred to medicine or to the health sector and spoke of the treatment and prevention of illness and disease. In most developed countries and many developing countries health care is provided to everyone regardless of their ability to pay.
