PUBLIC HEALTH

Otago Witness, Issue 3755, 2 March 1926, Page 26

PUBLIC HEALTH

THE WATCHWORD OF PREVENTION. In these few thoughts an endeavour has been made to present an outline of certain features of the Department of Health’s exhibit, and to awaken an interest in such matters. The necessity for the support of public opinion in the realm of preventive medicine is one of supreme importance, for is it not surely essential that keen interest in all matters affecting the health of the community should be the concern of every citizen, and not that alone of the medical, nursing, and technical professions? Such was the statement made by Mr F. Clayton, librarian for the Department of Public Health, in the course of an interesting and valuable lecture from the Exhibition radio station. Mr Clayton did ->t attempt to describe the bay in the Government pavilion in detail. Such ’descriptions have already been published, and the lecturer confined his attention to a general survey of public health work and what it means. “The state of the public health is an important factor in the history of any country; for if the population of a country steadily decreases through premature disease the history of that country will soon become a history of the past,” he said, “It is imperative therefore for citizens of this country to take an intelligent interest in all problems affecting the health of the community, and to be ever vigilant in the conquest of those ‘pestilences that walketh in darkness.’ Nature has blessed this country with a splendid climate, a climate in many ways ideal for the production of a virile and happy race, and it is for us to take the full advantage of such a heritage. “One of the most important means to this end is the education of the public in matters affecting the health of the community and the individual, so as to lengthen the period of life and to make it happier and more effective. It is manifestly impossible in a popular exhibition to deal exhaustively with any one branch of public health work, but on the other hand many lessons can be learned from a general survey of the problem which might be missed in a more detailed and exhaustive demonstration of the subject. The exhibit of the Department of Health is designed to interest, educate, and stimulate to further study those who find in the problem of health and disease prevention a key to happiness and prosperity. Day by day victories are being won by the forces of disease prevention as illustrated by the uniform lowering of our death rate until now it is probably the lowest ever recorded in any country—on an average people are living to an older age, our infantile mortality rate is an example to the whole world of the result of a sound knowledge of the needs of human life in its tender years. “There is profound wisdom in the old maxim ‘Prevention is better than cure,’ and an earnest consideration of the various sections of the health exhibit will do much to explain how some of the fundamental laws of prevention can be carried out, and will help the individual to avail himseif of the benefits conferred by science and regulate his life in accordance with standards of known value. At every point of our existence we are in contact with some subject which is included in this demonstration. Before the child is born much can be done to safeguard his health interest as well as the mother for the care of the mother and child is the first step in a nation’s health “In fact, a watchword of medicine of today is prevention, and a department of the great subject of preventive medicine, is antenatal work—a subject of national importance, since it is the care of the expectant mother. As an infant the child calls for special care with regard to food, clothing, fresh air, and sunlight. An exhibit shows how a bean plant raised out of doors under ordinary conditions arrives at full maturity while another from the same seed but grown in absolute dark ness is but a stunted and undeveloped specimen. And so it is with human life, especially in the tender years of childhood A wise mother knows that the child she loves requires sunlight and fresh air as much as a plant. The section of the departmental exhibit dealing with these matters should therefore deeply interest all parents.”