The Conservative party has published its draft health manifesto. In it, they pledge to 'focus on the health results that really matter' and commit to 'improving the health of the nation.' However, there has been little serious discussion of what 'health' actually is.

In Votewise Now!, the Christian Medical Fellowship's Head of Communications, Andrew Fergusson, offers an alternative to both the minimal biomedical definition, 'the absence of disease or infirmity,' and maximal holistic definitions such as that adopted by the World Heath Organization (WHO), 'Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, not simply the absence of disease or infirmity.'

Exploring the theologian Jürgen Moltmann's assertion that 'health is the strength to be human,' Dr Fergusson considers what it means to be human and the implications for health care, touching on issues as broad as euthanasia, 'polyclinics', organ donation, and stem-cell research.

Talk by politicians of putting patients before targets sounds all very abstract until it becomes personal. I recall discussing comparative survival times between Britain and the US with an oncology consultant last year for the particular kind of aggressive brain tumour that took my mother from us and being told that although average survival times were probably at least a couple of months longer in America, quality of life during that period was significantly better here.

Just today, somebody has written to me of how trying to cope with an elderly relative in hospital 200 miles away has convinced them that the government ought to be setting targets on time taken to get immobile elderly patients to the toilet or commode after they have asked for it, as the consequences of not getting them there fast enough are so dire in terms of additional complications caused and additional cost incurred. Yet how is it that such personal hygiene needs are not already viewed as a priority?

To 'put patients first' clearly requires a focus on those things that move individuals and communities towards having more strength to be more human, including a focus on dignity and compassion. After all, patients are not just collections of symptoms, but individuals with feelings, opinions and relationships with others.

How we define 'health' will determine, among other things, the range of care that we believe should be provided for 'free at the point of need' (controversial treatments including in vitro fertilisation, sex reassignment surgery, and expensive cutting-edge pharmaceutical developments) and the extent that we will be prepared to fund such care. So, before we start discussing any party's plans for the NHS, what do you think is 'health'?

To explore this and all the big general election issues further, order your copy of Votewise Now! today.

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