Health in the United Kingdom dependencies.
- Great Britain. Central Office of Information. Reference Division
- Date:
- 1956
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Health in the United Kingdom dependencies. Source: Wellcome Collection.
5/44 page 1
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Health in the United Kingdom dependencies. Source: Wellcome Collection.
![INTRODUCTION ‘The central purpose of British Colonial policy ... is to guide the Colonial territories to responsible self-government within the Commonwealth in conditions that ensure to the people concerned both a fair standard of living and freedom from oppression from any quarter.’! A vital factor in the implementation of this purpose is the improvement of health throughout the United Kingdom dependencies. Much progress has been made, details of which will be found in this pamphlet, but much still remains to be done. The dependencies are geographically, economically and socially so diverse that few generalizations can be made about their health problems that will hold good for them all. Where rich natural resources are being developed, as in West Africa, Northern Rhodesia and Malaya, social provision can proceed at a much faster rate than in the less endowed or less developed areas, particularly in Africa (where four-fifths of the total population of the dependencies live). Most of the dependencies lie within the tropics and this fact increases the extent of the health problem, even in territories more richly endowed in natural resources than others. The health problem in the dependencies was recently summarized thus: ‘It is difficult for those who have no personal experience of Colonial territories to grasp what an enormous task faces Colonial medical depart- ments in their endeavour to raise the standard of health of the Colonial peoples in their care. Many of these are still primitive and illiterate and unable on their own to get the better of the famine, drought, poverty and pestilence which surround them. Tropical diseases are widespread: malaria, sleeping sickness, filariasis, helminthiasis, yellow fever, yaws, the dysenteries, leprosy. Besides these so-called tropical diseases there are tuberculosis, venereal disease and malnutrition. The process of badly controlled urbaniza- tion has further complicated the public health problem. On the clinical side all the diseases commonly met with in the United Kingdom may also have to be catered for.”? It should also be remembered that it is only comparatively recently that public health measures have been introduced, even in advanced countries of the world. Compulsory and comprehensive environmental health services were not developed in the United Kingdom until the second half of the nineteenth century and child welfare services were established there only in the twentieth century.. The twentieth century, also, saw the establishment of British administration in many of the dependencies, including the most backward. Thus, it is only in the present century that the full-scale challenge of raising health standards in the largely tropical and underdeveloped territories for which the United Kingdom is responsible has had to be met. Moreover, in by far the greater part of the dependencies, particularly in Africa, there was no sound medical practice on which British administration could build; in these cases Colonial governments had to take on the whole responsibility, with only such foundations as pioneering missions had laid. 1The Colonial Empire (1947-1948), June 1948, Cmd. 7433. sv * Appointments in Her Majesty’s Oversea Civil Service, HMSO, 1955. ]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b3217245x_0005.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
