pdez90
commented
8 years ago Note: this is the link to the AGROVOC thesaurus used by the FAO library: http://oek1.fao.org/skosmos/agrovoc/en/
The thesaurus has the terms "basic needs" (alternative term to basic services), which is influenced by living standards, nutritional requirements, and quality of life. Narrower concepts are educational needs, housing needs, and information needs.
WHO notes that: 'We have essential surgery , essential medicines versus basic health services or basic health care. Essential medicines are intended to be available within the context of functioning health systems at all times in adequate amounts, in the appropriate dosage forms, with assured quality and adequate information, and at a price the individual and the community can afford.
Some cases there is an interchange between the two terms
as here,
, however the person responsible for “essential Surgery” at WHO explained to me that you could have surgery that was essential but not basic (the procedure is complex (thus not basic) and necessary (thus essential). The same could be said for essential medicines. They could be complex drugs that require various dosages, handling or delivery into the body system that are essential and treat only a specific disease but other medicines that are basic (cover multiple diseases and are easily administrated).
So from what I have seen in the health field, you do have these differences between the two terms: 'basic services and essential services' and relevant to our field'
pbuttigieg
mark-jensen
This is a summary of a discussion Lud, Pier, Mark and I had.
We were trying to understand if 'basic services' #63 was the same as 'essential services'
@pbuttigieg initially proposed: 'essential service' = "A service which is necessary to sustain human life."
@mark-jensen said that he found the definition of 'essential services to be different from 'basicc services' in that the usage differed from sustaining human life. For example, "the essential services needed for women and girls that are vulnerable to gender-based violence."
This led him to think there is a more general idea to essential service here, that of "a service which is minimally necessary for the completion of some objective."
Lud provided context for 'essential services' by providing the SDG in which the term is mentioned: 1.a: Ensure significant mobilization of resources from a variety of sources, including through enhanced development cooperation, in order to provide adequate and predictable means for developing countries, in particular least developed countries, to implement programmes and policies to end poverty in all its dimensions 1.a.2 Spending on essential services (education, health and social protection) as a percentage of total government spending
Pier asked if the list in parentheses was meant to be exhaustive? And if so, what these services are considered essential for (sustainable development?) to come up with a reasonable definition. "education services", "health services", and "social protection services" are also quite broad and can certainly subsume non-essential services.
From the Un thesaurus: http://lib-thesaurus.un.org and from publications tagged with 'essential services': http://u10329uk.eos-intl.eu/U10329UK/OPAC/Index.aspx, Mark noted that his and Pier's attempt to distinguish 'essential services' as those needed to sustain human life, while 'basic services' as those services which maintain well-being and promote development is not consistently reflected in UN documentation.
He saw limited use of 'essential services', and almost always within some particular context.
He noted: The definition of 'essential service' in a general sense could be: "A service which is necessary for the completion of some objective."
If needed, given particular applications, we can define subclasses of 'essential service' based on the criteria of "essential to what" (to reduce poverty, to provide universal access to health care, etc).