Imagine a room with a wash basin. Upon entering, you find water pouring out of an open tap, the outlets in the sink blocked, the sink overflowing and a mess on the floor. What would be your first response to tackle this situation? Mop the floor or turn off the tap? Dr Burkitt...

Medical and nursing professions have long become used to floor mopping, using drugs and technology to tackle the overflow of illnesses and disabilities in the community. We are enthralled by the ‘cherry or chocolate flavoured floor mops’ manufactured by the industry.

Hence the establishment of a dominant  paradigm of the bio-medical, techno-managerial, model of hospicentric medicine with little interest to support health promotion and health policy.

“The primary determinants of disease are mainly economic and social and therefore its remedies must also be economic and social…. medicine and politics cannot and should not be kept apart.” G. Rose

The floor mopper stress coronary care units and promote coronary bypass surgery, and multiple pills till the ‘tap turner off’ take over to promote exercise, cycling, diet modification, reduction in smoking, life style changes and social controls over advertising through policy.

Shared in 2013 Ravi Narayan, a young postgraduate student of Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 1973. http://alterdoctor.in/are-you-a-tap-turner-off/

Your Covid-19 response is focused on mopping the floor instead of turning off the tap, when you are set on expanding hospital beds with little attention to stopping the spread of new infections. Don't be surprised when your health system buckle under pressure.