General Knowledge and Public Health Awareness
Scope
This section tests whether you understand how health is measured, protected and organised: determinants of health, levels of prevention, core indicators, the Lebanese health system, and global priorities such as universal health coverage and antimicrobial resistance.
Core rules
- Determinants: health is shaped by income, education, environment, behaviour and access to services, not by health care alone.
- Prevention levels: primary prevents onset (vaccination, safe water, tobacco control); secondary is early detection (mammography, Pap smear); tertiary limits disability and rehabilitates.
- Indicators: incidence counts new cases per population per time; prevalence counts all existing cases. Infant mortality is deaths under age 1 per 1,000 live births; the maternal mortality ratio also uses live births in the denominator.
- Systems: WHO describes six building blocks - service delivery, workforce, information, medicines and technology, financing, leadership. Universal health coverage means access without financial hardship, not free care for everyone.
- Lebanon specifics: the Ministry of Public Health contracts a national network of primary health care centres and covers hospitalisation for uninsured patients; the National Social Security Fund and private insurers cover others. Noncommunicable diseases, tobacco use, mental health and refugee health needs are priority burdens.
Worked example with reasoning
A district records 250 deaths of children under five and 10,000 live births in one year. Under-five mortality rate = 250/10,000 × 1,000 = 25 per 1,000 live births. Using total population as the denominator is wrong, because the indicator is defined against live births.
Traps that cost marks
- Swapping incidence and prevalence.
- Calling a screening test a diagnosis.
- Assuming a rising number of cases means a rising rate without checking the denominator.
- Reading life expectancy as the age at which people die.
Why it matters
These items are usually straightforward marks; they reward precise definitions and current examples rather than opinion.