Health issues can be managed if proper actions are taken; SOP/ Public Health

Please help me by providing suggestions, views and mistakes about this statement of purpose.

Living in a developing country like India has exposed me to various health issues, which if taken care of, can improve the health of population more efficiently. It is one of the reason which brought my interest to study Masters in Public Health.

I have done my graduation in Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery from Liaoning Medical University, China. The reason for doing my degree from China was the tough competition for the lesser number of available seats in Medical Colleges in my country. Due to which some of my high school classmates gave up and chose a different path. But, I was determined to be a doctor and started exploring various options which would help me in pursuing my goal. In the end, I took the opportunity to study in a medical university in China.

At the end of the course, I thought I would just go back to my country and start practicing as a doctor. But, one day a professor from an American university came to our university to promote their masters program in Public Health. At that time i was not aware of such program, But I found his speech and presentation to be so impressive that I became interested in that program at that same moment. Unfortunately, I was unable to take up that course because later on I came to know that they were enrolling the students who were in the first or second year of their studies. It was a big disappointment for me but I was not going to give up so easily again. Therefore, when i came back to India after my graduation, I started looking for MPH programs in Canadian universities. I found your university to be the best, but yet again, I was out of luck because i missed the deadline for submission of applications for the September 2012 course. Therefore I decided to apply for September 2013. Now I had more than an year to wait. So, instead of working I decided to study Clinical Research in the mean time.

At present I am doing an advanced diploma in Clinical Research in India, which will finish in August 2013. I took up this course because I had sufficient medical knowledge but I was lacking in Biostatistics, which is one of the important subject along with epidemiology in Public Health. Therefore, I decided to expand my knowledge into Clinical Research field, research methods and procedures and improve my understanding of Biostatistics. Along with that i also took a great opportunity to study a 4 months online course (Quantitative Methods in Clinical and Public Health Research) from Harvard School of Public Health, USA. It was very informative and useful and gave me a good knowledge about various Epidemiological and Biostatistical methods, which I think will help me a lot in Public Health program. In this online program I also had the opportunity to learn and to use STATA, which is a Data Analysis and Statistical Software for Professional Researchers.

Public Health is one of the important factor which plays an important role in the development of a country. India, being a developing country and the world's second largest popuolus country in the world is now growing at a very fast pace but at the same time it is facing public health issues. Public health in India exhibits a peculiar trend. There is a serious gap in health infrastructure on the one hand and a double burden of communicable and non-communicable diseases on the other. Statistics suggest that India has only 1.5 hospital beds per 1000 population. Lifestyle diseases claim higher number of lives among which Heart diseases has the highest share. Diabetes on the other hand has become the most alarming health issue with regard to public health in India. According to a source there were only 2.1% diabetics in urban India in the 1970s, the number has grown to 12.1% for adults above the age of 20. It is said that India will become the diabetic capital of the world in coming years. Another important health factor where India needs to focus includes the Infant Mortality Rate(IMR). IMR of India is 46.07, which is very high compared to the IMR of less than 10.0 for countries like USA, Canada, Australia, Japan and others.

I believe that all these Health issues can be managed if proper actions are take. It can be made possible by making newer and more efficient health policies, Promoting health and educating people in rural areas, increasing the number of primary health care centers in rural areas, Improved hospital infrastructure with proper facilities, Improvement in natural disaster response system etc. All the health issues which my country is facing and an urge to resolve these issues motivates me to have an in depth knowledge of Public Health. I believe that the knowledge and experience which i will gain from your esteemed University's Public Health program will certainly help me in making one step towards the improvement of health status of my country.

I graduated in Medicine and Surgery from Liaoning Medical University, China due to the fact that there were limited opportunities in my country for pursuing medicine for tertiary education


I think this part does not add much value for your SOP. You can either leave it out or restrict to talk about you only;

However much difficult the task had been, I did not want sacrifice my passion for medicine and finally took up the challenge in studying medicine in China.

Thank you so much for giving me your valuable time.