Nicolae Testemitanu State University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Moldova

KEYWORDS: health promotion, health education, mass-media information.

BACKGROUND: The organization and analysis of the educational measures for the public health in the prevention of the respiratory infections by the public health specialists in an expeditious and timely manner.

GOALS: To evaluate the health education measures of the respiratory pathology among the population of the Republic of Moldova by the medical institutions.

METHODS: The research is a longitudinal retrospective study, based on the analysis of the quarterly and annual statistical reports. For the data analysis, the epidemiological description method and statistical method were used. The health education measures were analyzed in the field of respiratory pathology in two municipalities, 33 districts, and 17 republican medical institutions. This study was based on the evaluation of 10 types of health education measures: conversations, health bulletins, informational materials, lectures, press releases, radio shows, TV shows, seminars, and information placed on the Internet.

RESULTS: Only 5.8% of the health education information measures are available from within the total informational volume of the respiratory system diseases. From this volume, the most common method of the health education, between the years 2011 and 2016, was the conversation with the population, with a 94.5% to 94.7% share, followed by the lectures, with a share of 4.4% (2011) to 6.2% (2013), then it falls down to 4.1% in 2016. The less-used methods, with only a 0.04% - 0.8% share, were the methodical informative material: 0,3% - 0,6%, press releases and TV broadcasts accounted for a mere 0.02% - 0.07%. The share of the remaining health education measures ranged from 0.1% to 0.9% for seminars, health bulletins, and radio programs.

The information obtained indicates that the republican medical institutions were not very active in the health education and did not fulfill the sufficient health education measures in the field of the respiratory diseases and had minimal effect. Only some institutions have taken the educational measures using the mass media: the Phtisio - Pneumological Institute with a 16.8% share, the Clinical Hospital for Traumatology and Orthopedics - 10.8% share and the Hospital of the Ministry of Health – with 8.2% share; while the Cardiology Institute, the Clinical Hospital for Children “E. Cotaga” and Dermato-Venereal Dispensary - did not take any educational measures for the prevention of the respiratory diseases.

CONCLUSION: In the Republic of Moldova there has been insufficient health education measures taken to prevent the respiratory diseases, the mass-media being used minimally.

Materials of the Conference “Contemporary Issues In Preventive Medicine”, funded by NIH USA, Fogarty International Center “iCREATE: Increasing Capacity in Research in Eastern Europe” grant number [2D43TW007261-11]21-23 May, 2018 Yerevan, Republic of Armenia