Health infrastructure planning
Introduction
Sanitary engineering is the branch of engineering basically dedicated to the sanitation of the areas in which human activity takes place. To do this, it uses the knowledge taught in disciplines such as hydraulics, chemical engineering, biology (particularly microbiology), physics, mathematics, mechanics, electromagnetism, electromechanics, Thermodynamics, Electrochemistry, among others. Its field has been complemented and shared in recent years with the tasks faced by environmental engineering, which extends its activity to aerial and edaphic environments.
Man has the need to live in society. This results in the formation of human agglomerations, which bring many problems that become more acute when the population is formed without a prior planning plan. Among the many problems that urban agglomerations bring, those that most interest Sanitary Engineering are the appearance of diseases, in greater quantities, when the fundamental requirements of hygiene are not met. The hygienic problems caused by large urbanizations, which are often exacerbated by the presence of the animals that surround us, ultimately translate into the deterioration of the surrounding environment, that is, what we would commonly call pollution is produced.
The elements of the environment susceptible to contamination are air and water (and soil); which, along with food, light and heat, are what have been called the five essential elements for life. Consequently, the need arises to adopt, through the vector that manages health, all measures that concern the improvement of the living conditions of the population and the care of collective health.
Possibly the greatest achievement of sanitary engineering was the drastic decrease in water-borne diseases, such as dysentery, typhoid, childhood diarrhea and others. Such an achievement was achieved through the treatment of water for human consumption, clarifying, filtering and disinfecting it. These practices began to be carried out in the contemporary age from the mid-19th century, and the name of the English doctor John Snow especially emerged there, who combined epidemiology and engineering methods in his study.
Sanitary Engineering is oriented to the management, planning, analysis, design, development and implementation of appropriate technologies that seek to offer alternative solutions to the various problems of the community and its environment, making use of cutting-edge technologies in the various fields of science and human endeavor. It constitutes, then, a fundamental part in the solution to health and environmental problems, an activity that, through the development of models applied to the environmental condition, seeks to conserve, improve and guarantee public health and the well-being of the community.