ADDING TO OUR YEARS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19325, 2 June 1925, Page 10

ADDING TO OUR YEARS

AN AMERICAN HEALTH EFFORT. The Alilbank memorial in America is conducting experimental work by which its managers hope to prove that twenty years may be added to the average life-span within the next fifty years. They have launched a $2,000.000 public-health experiment to be conducted in three New York« State centres; one in a district in New York City, not yet selected, with a population of about 200,000; the others, already ■ der way, in Cattaraugus County, New York, with 72.000 residents, and in Syracuse, with 175,000. In these communities, eminent publichealth workers will supervise intensive hygienic and medical activities for a period of five years, the Alilbank directors having appropriated $325,000 annually for the field work. The purpose is not alone to reduce 11 mortality rates, but to do so at a cost that can be assumed by the communities themselves after the test is finished. The New Yor.. I'ribune, in a review of the subject, says:— “In devoting a substantial part of its income to these health demonstrations, John A. Kingsbury, former commissioner of Public AVelfare in New A'ork City and secretary of the fund, said, the Alilbank Fund is allying itself with a world movement. The aim of the movement was strikingly stated at the recent Cleveland meeting of th«* American Public Health Association when that organisation of practical health officers dedicated itself to the task of adding twenty years to the average length of life now prevailing in the, United States. “The committee on resolutions there directed attention to a century of striking achievements in the science of public health, resulting in an accelerated increase in the average length of ; life. It called attention to the fact that within the last three-quarters of a century the average duration ot life has been extended by not less than fifteen years in many of the leading nations of the world.

“The gain in the life-span during the past two decades has been greater than during the previous half-century. AVhilc sevnety-fivc years ago one-fourth of all persons born in England died before reaching the age of three ami onehalf years, a decade ago it was not until the age of thirty-three and a half years that one-fourth died.” "‘Pointing out that the Alilbank Fund directors had been assured by experienced public health experts that no inherent obstacle stands in the way of extending the life-span twenty years in a half-century. Air. Kingsbury called attention to the fact that ten years have been added to the average tenure within the last generation in this country. “The project known as the New York health' and tuberculosis demonstrations, will aim particularly at determining which diseases yield most readily to concerted attack; to what extent tuberculosis can be further reduced; whether the infant mortality rate of 100 to the 1,000 still existing in backward parts can be reduced to the present model rate of fifty; whether diphtheria, for example, can be eliminated, and what methods work best with every disease known to man in the three varying environ meats. “Edward AV. Sheldon, president of the United States Trust Company, is chairman of the Alilbank Fund, which was founded and endowed to the extent of more than nine million dollars, by the late Elizabeth Alilbank Anderson. “During 1922 the annual report shows the fund distributed 254,891.41 dollars for constructive health and social work, according to the terras of the donor. The total sum disbursed since its establishment in 1905 has been 2,131,673.09 dollars.”