PUBLIC HEALTH PROMOTION

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27307, 25 March 1954, Page 10

PUBLIC HEALTH PROMOTION

ACTIVITIES OF WORLD ORGANISATION

ACCOUNT BY VISITING OFFICIAL

Spectacularly and economically successful methods of combating disease were often used by advisers of the World Health Organisation as a basis for their programme of improving the public health of a country, said Mr Paul Bierstein. adviser on environmental sanitation to the Western Pacific office of the World Health Organisation. in an address in Christchurch last evening, at a meeting organised by the Christchurch branch of the United Nations Association and the New Zealand branch of the Royal Sanitary Institute. “Illness is such a constant condition in many countries that it is just accepted,’’ he said. “When you go in with other public health measures, you can use the confidence gained from these blue chip or blue ribbon methods,’’ Mr Bierstein said. “There is a danger that you can introduce public health faster than the country can absorb it. We believe in introducing it on economic lines. We choose first those methods that will better the economic status of the country.”

Until residual sprays such as D.D.T. and gammexane were introduced, health workers could not attack malaria, a disease which was economically disastrous to a country, he said. Now they could control it with spectacular results. In Greece, World Health Organisation workers had arrived to find that 17 per cent, of all school children had malaria. When the workers .left three years later, a test of 20,000 persons showed 16 positive cases.

Advisory Functions But the organisation worked in an advisory capacity, Mr Bierstein said. Its workers went to a country which asked for aid. They were not policemen and could not enforce their teachings. The organisation’s budget of 8.500,000 dollars —less than the city of New York spent on its annual public health programme—did not allow for much material assistance.

As a specialised agency of the United Nations, the Health Organisation’s task was to implement the general aim of preserving the peace, he said. The organisation aimed to increase and preserve the health of all the people in the world. The organisation was divided into six regional areas: the Americas, Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean, Africa (south of the Sahara), South-east Asia, and the Western Pacific.

The headquarters of the organisation in Geneva acted as a clearing-house for information, where expert committees produced reports on latest developments, Mr Bierstein said. Regional officers, too, acted as clearinghouses for information, as well as supplying consultants to any country which asked for advice on its health problems. Demonstration teams were also sent out to show the latest methods of public health. Study Groups Many problems were tackled by members of the organisation’s staff, he said. Study groups had been set up in the Philippines to find out why former health promotion methods had failed, and to determine what should be done. Similar groups were working in North Borneo, Greece, and Egypt. A big problem for officers of the organisation was schistosomias, a disease for which there was no known drug and, so far, no effective method of control, Mr Bierstein said. In Egypt, where the disease was rated as the No. 1 public health problem, health authorities had been working on the control of it for 30 years, and today there was a higher incidence of the disease than when they started. tin Japan, the organisation was assisting in solving the problem of nightsoil disposal, which in that country assumed “gigantic proportions,” said Mr Bierstein. The Organisation was experimenting with scientific composting. In the Philippines, the problem was to get people to use latrines instead of the bushes—it was just as simple as that.