Self-care in health: Beyond what you think

Worldwide, self-care has been practised by people for thousands of years. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), self-care refers to the ability of individuals, families, and communities to promote health, prevent disease, maintain health, and cope with illness and disability with or without the support of a health worker. 

Interestingly, with this, self-care is not something new. However, new products, information and technologies are changing and have the potential to change how people access healthcare services, as well as how they care for themselves and those around them. These self-care interventions can include high-quality medicines, devices, tools to test and diagnose, and digital tools which can be provided within or outside of a healthcare facility, with or without the support of a health worker.

In fact, the COVID-19 pandemic shone a light on the importance of self-care, and the importance of self-care interventions to help maintain essential health services for people. Even when there are major disruptions to the national health systems, high-quality and evidence-based self-care interventions can provide an important alternative if the usual health facility- or health worker-based services become unavailable or restricted. 

The Center for Health Human Rights and Development (CEHURD) in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Population Services International (PSI) has been implementing interventions toward the institutionalization of self-care in Uganda. Mukono district has been one of the pilot districts for self-care. However, from the implementation of self-care, they learnt about the need to bring on board as many stakeholders as possible especially those that are at the forefront of direct service provision.

Thus, they organized a half-day meeting on the orientation of health professional bodies on the concept of self-care. This was held on 05^th April 2023 at Fairway Hotel. Participants included midwives and nurses, doctors, pharmacists, allied health staff, and representatives from health professional councils and associations.

As one of the participants, I realized that self-care is power, and enhances the ability for the common person to take care of their own health care. It is important for us as healthcare workers and the community at large to note that self-care consists of ;

• Self-awareness: This involves self-help, self-education, self-regulation, self-efficacy, and self-determination. For example, in SRHR, providing health information on the menstrual cycle, breastfeeding, prevention of teenage pregnancy, sexuality, using the eligibility criteria wheel for a contraceptive option, exercise, nutrition, post-abortion care and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases is part of self-awareness.
• Self-testing: This includes self-sampling, self-screening, self-diagnosis, self-collection, and self-monitoring. For instance, individuals are able to test themselves using rapid strips and methods like; pregnancy tests, HIV tests using Ora quick, random blood sugar tests, measuring their own weight and height, malaria tests, syphilis and gonorrhoea tests, HPV sampling, use of the SGBV self-sampling kit and more. By raising awareness of self-testing and taking the self-testing kits into the community, people are able to more quickly and simply check their status for example for HIV and this is changing the way they are seeing testing, treatment and the management of HIV.
• Self-management through self-medication, self-treatment, self-examination, self-injection, self-administration, and self-use. For example, the self-injection like Sayana press for family planning, use of over-the-counter contraceptive pills, emergency pills, use of condoms, cycle beads, use of folic acid for preconception, iron and folic acid during pregnancy, use of mosquito nets, antiretroviral therapy refills and many others

Overall, self-care empowers the community members about their own health, increases their satisfaction, reduces waiting time, and helps to reduce congestion in the health facilities. 

Lilian Nuwabaine Luyima; BSc Nurse & MSN-Midwife & Women’s’ Health Specialist working with Aga Khan University