TMSS Medical College Journal

In a global world where there is an explosion of technology, information and IT system, the countries in South Asian | Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) are still struggling to reach a certain standard of health. One of the | reasons for that is lack of sufficient and efficient public health specialist to address the public health. The emerging of new diseases posed new challenges to public health to address the new challenge. Only just there have been efforts to develop capacity building in public health in these countries by producing competent public health workforce through public | health institutes and schools and undergraduate medical programme This review focused on current status of public health | education in South East Asia region and its challenges. It also focuses on different aspects of public health education and how we can modify or update public health education for reaching the goal of Universal health coverage by 2020. In this | review, we try to summarized post graduate and undergraduate education reform and strategies that has been proposed by ‘World Health Organization and from published articles in different journals in South East Asian region.

South East Asia Region (SEAR) consists of eleven countries squeezed with 620 million people makes it one of the most populated regions in the world. Molded by its history, geography and position the region is a major crossroad of trade, and consists of vast social, economic and political diversity'. Despite their diversity, SEAR countries are attempting to shape a common regional identity to seek jointly acceptable and effective solutions for the key regional health challenges’ While globally there has been an blast of scientific and technological discoveries that help diagnose, prevent, and treat diseases, the countries of the South East Asia region have failed to fully gather the benefits of these breakthroughs for many reasons.’ A remarkable progress has been made for most of the areas of public health in this region but recent evaluation indicates uneven achievements within and across the countries®.