HOME HEALTH GUIDE

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5326, 12 February 1947, Page 3

HOME HEALTH GUIDE

HEALTH IN INDUSTRY. (By Department of Health.) Overseas, particularly in the United • States and in England; safe and healthfnl worlcing concfitions are being more and niore insisted on by -the workers themselves oh the one hand and by large employers and trade organisations on the other. Medicine and big-group industry run factorv medical departments that provide first aid on the spot, medical and surgieal care as '.needed,and in adclition, check the health of the entire staff, and try to kaep them healthy, and the accident rate as low as possible. .through studying accident .prevention. The benefits are so apparent in big industry that industrial hyg'iene has not only come to stay there, but is growing in scope year by year. Industries in too small a way to employ works' doctors or nurses on their own have had no demonstration of the benefits of health supervision within the plant. As the nurse or doc-' tor, or both, go on year after yc-ar concl'jicting health overhauls of the staff, gradually the health record improves as compared' with other plants without sueh serviee. Early cases of tubereulosis are cletected before they have had time to infect other workers, diabetes is revealed early, disorders thac arise out of the job are quickly diagnosed, whereas they would often puzzle outside physicians. Any heart defects, | eye trouble, delective sight or hear- | irg, infected tonsils, decayed teeth — j the'se things are found and the worker i encouraged to have treatnient or c.or- i rection early. The result slowly niounts up for the i management as the years go by, in j less financial loss from siekness and | absenteeism by workers. In a control- ; led survey of workers with periodic \ health examinations compared yith a ; similar number without, there were definitely fewer major and minor ill- 1 nehses in the former and this became j more aparent as the years advanced. , The dividends in inditstrial health j | maintenanee take time to appear and j be obvious. That is -why small industrial con- | cenis have not become enthusiastic ovei* an industrial health serviee. The benefits come from practice. It would pay employers to arrange parttime physieian and nursing serviee where f c.ll-time would 1 e impossihle. ■ j