PUBLIC HEALTH.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVI, Issue 4870, 28 August 1925, Page 4

PUBLIC HEALTH.

INTERNATIONAL HYGIENE A WORLD CRUSADE. “Perhaps, the most significant trend in modern hygiene is that international co-operation which has sprung into being since men ceased slaughtering each other. True, there was international co-operation pripr to the Great War—quarantine’s an old story —but there has never previously been a union of peoples pn a large scale, not solely for the purpose of safeguarding themselves from the ravages of disease, but with the avowed intention of stamping out disease, wherever found, and of spreading light and learning.” Dr. Andrew Balfour, C. 8., C.M.G., M.D., one of the greatest world authorities on modern hygiene, delivered a remarmable lecture', which is recorded in the “Journal of the Royal Society of Arts.” It is a clarion call to the British Empire which, if heeded, will do more to cement the Empire than mere flag waving and appeals to loyalty. We are glad to give it all the publicity in our power. After the remarks quoted above Dr. Balfour said:—

“It is a fine conception, and is seen in its highest development at Geneva, where the Health Section of the League of Nations is engaged upon its beneficent and widespread work, and in the foreign operations of the International Health Board of the Rockefeller Foundation, for these, though of American origin, depend upon col'laboration with other nations.

“Professor Madden, bf Copenhagen, has recently described the health organisation of the League of Nations, and lists its chief activities as follows :

“1. Measures for the control of epidemics..

“2. The standardisation of certain laboratory products and procedures. “3, Co-oepration with other League of Nations organisations in matters that involve medical or public health questions.

“4. Promition and improvement of public health work by the so-called interchanges of health officers between different countries, and by technical advice te. various governments.

“5. The collection and dissemination of epidemiologic information, including the co-ordination- and improvement of vital statistics for international use, and epidemiologic research. "6. Miscellaneous.

“Here is a remarkable programme, and tstill more remarkable are the ways in which it has been carried into effect and the results already achieved.

“As for the ; International Health Board, it has spread its campaigns all over the world, and its operations are as diverse as they are valuable. It pursues the hookworm in many territories, it Aval’s against the mosquito, both the malaria' carrier and the yel-low-fever carried. Indeed, as regards yellow-fever, it. has (succeeded in well-nigh obliterating that disease from the New World, and is now, like Alexander, seeking another world to conquer, and finding it in the French and British possessions on the African West Coast.

“It has helped the' French to fight tuberculosis, it has:- aided in the medical education of the Chinese, it has given huge grants'.to many countries,'including our’owei, for the development of public health teaching and research ; it is, in short, a kind of fairy godmother to- the nations. A less pleasing simile is that of a universal milch cow, .’and yet it is. apposite, for in a. way it supplies the milk of human kindness as well as the sinews of war.

“Now milk is a food for babies, and while it is right and fitting that the younger and struggling nations should benefit by the’ nourishment so generously distilled, from the American udders, and while in certain directions the older, though none the less struggling, peoples, impoverished by the World War, should have their share, for the. pabulum is intended for the healing of the nations, yet I confess to some misgivings where the British Empire is concerned. “That Empire has good reason -to be grateful, but I sometimes think ' it tends to forget its own responsibilities. True, it.had done, and is doing, a great deal,/but we should see to i.t that we take our full share in this welfare work. ‘

“There is much to be learned from international' co-operation, for, ' after all, the British Empire is a conge riots of nations, .and, apart from any other consideration, any thing which serves to bind them more closely in bonds of amity is nont only desirable but essential. Surely health considerations should be as potent a: tie as financial links! At any rate, they are leas mundane .and mere althuistic.

“The British. Empire owns nearly one-quarter of the earth, lias a white populaiton of over 60,000,000 and a native races, population of 4'00,000,000’,

“Is this not good enough to make a start upon ? It is true that the great s,elf-governing Dominions can be left to look after their own public health affairs—in some ways, perhaps, they manage them better than we do ours —but from an Imperial standpoint it would be well if they were in closer connection with the Mother Country. There is much they can yet learn from England, there is much that England can leam from them, and some of them, like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, with all their loyalty and traditions, are tending to drift away in matters hygieiii'c. Of cbtirse, it is difficult to keep in touch, but the new London School of Hygiene, when it comes into being, should be able to act as a co-ordinating centre. “It is hoped to develop this aspect of its work, and already it is collaborating with the enlightened governments of Southern Rhodesia' in an effort to determine the precisle etiology and pathology of blackwater fever, that enemy of the white (.settler, that foe to the opening up of the great chain of Centra] African tablelands which may yet replace India as the

brightest jewel in the British crown.

“But much more is required’ than isolated endeavour; As a nation we are not yet fully alive to the needs of our tropical colonies from! the health point of view; Things, no doubt, are very much better than they were, at least in certain territories, but there is a lamentable lack of sympathetic and scientific co-operation. How can it be otherwise when there is no properly constituted Colonial Medical Service, where there is no official istaff of hygiene advisers constantly coming and going, as there should be? Twenty-five years have passed since they were first suggested, and we are still thinking about them.

“This and many other necessary developments have been set forth, have been discussed, have even been fought over—and then relegated to obscurity.”