Health in the United Kingdom dependencies.

  • Great Britain. Central Office of Information. Reference Division
Date:
1956
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Health in the United Kingdom dependencies. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    HEALTH POLICY For many years health policy in the Colonies remained primarily curative. When preventive medicine was first introduced, most attention was given to such environmental causes of disease as insect carriers and the pollution of drinking water. Only comparatively recently has it become possible to turn attention to other important sources of ill health such as conditions conducive to tuberculosis, which in dense communities is now by far the most serious clinical and public health problem, and malnutrition. More and more importance is now being attached to preventive medicine; it is becoming generally recognized that the planning of public health policy must be closely co-ordinated with all the other governmental activities which affect the physical and social environment. These changes are reflected in the summary of medical policy in the Colonies contained in the introduction to a report on the training of nurses for the Colonies, published in August 1945.1 The report points out that in the individual Colonial territories ‘the problems of public health differ to some extent but the fundamental needs are everywhere the same and medical policy aims at securing the benefits of the knowledge of modern medicine for the largest possible numbers of the population’. The report continues: ‘The medical services are now generally regarded as part of a co-operative effort for improving the well-being of the community. In this effort all bodies and organizations, both official and unofficial, which share the common aim and are competent to assist in achieving it, should play their part. It is now accepted, therefore, not only that there should be the closest co-operation between the Government medical departments and the medical services provided by local authorities, commercial organizations and voluntary bodies, but that there should be intimate collaboration between medical workers on the one side and the staff of the Administrative Service and of such departments as Education, Agriculture, and Veterinary Services on the other. In the general plans for social welfare, drawn up with due regard to the needs of all sections, urban or rural, of the population, it is clear that very great emphasis should be given to medical work and in particular to its preventive aspect. ‘It has been suggested that, great as the need is for hospitals to cure and alleviate disease and also, incidentally, to secure the confidence of the population, in some territories too much stress has been placed in the past on curative services and that the tradition of some Colonial medical departments has been directed more to the cure of disease than to its prevention. Whatever the position may now be in this respect it seems clear that hospital services in most Colonial territories can at present be available only to a small proportion of the people who are suffering from disease or its results; on the other hand, in tropical territories, at any rate, much sickness is preventable. It would appear to follow from this that a primary aim of medical workers in such territories should be to improve health 1Report of the Committee on the Training of Nurses for the Colonies. Cmd. 6672.
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