Dermatology: a public health perspective

ABSTRACT

Dermatology is a branch of medicine which is related to the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of the diseases and disorders that affect the skin and its appendages including hair, nail, sweat glands and mucosal surfaces of mouth and external genitalia. There are about 3000 clinical entities in the field of dermatology, which are very diverse in terms of their etiologies. Although some of these diseases are really prevalent and some others of them have high incidence rates and acknowledging that because of their visibility in many cases they are associated with stress, anxiety and impairment of patients' quality of lives, their resultant burden of disease at individual, familial and social levels are usually ignored. Herein, we provide some examples of the adverse public health and health economics effects of different dermatological diseases and disorders in different countries and populations. We also provide some reasons for this negligence and suggest some strategies to tackle this problem: