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135
The Organisation of a Health Week.
The survey report affords an opportunity whereby a record may
be made of the Health Exhibition now held annually in the Borough.
Each succeeding year sees new features, of course, but a statement on
the organisation may be useful to others and of interest to the Council.
The object of a Health Week is :—
(a) To teach every householder to be his own Medical Officer of
Health. Public Health should begin at home and not at the Town Hall.
(b) The man who safeguards his family's health protects his
neighbour's highest interests.
(c) The Public Health Department of the Borough is the G.H.Q.,
or Health Intelligence Centre, with which every citizen is cordially
invited to keep in touch, by calling or writing for information on any
subject within the ambit of preventive medicine.
(d) Every week in the Borough is a Health Week; the present
venture is an outward and visible manifestation of the silent but
powerful forces which are at work, day after day, throughout the year,
to care for the citizen and those dear to him.
(e) A citizen has definite rights. He can call upon the Ante-Natal
Department to tend his expectant wife and chase away the fears which
mingle with the joyful anticipation of the day. He can stand at the
gate of the municipal maternity home and see the Council's nursing
staff welcome his wife into his own maternity home. He can call
upon his own Council's doctor and Health Visitor to stand over his
baby boy until he is a little man of five, when his school doctor takes
his son's hand and sees him through school life. And so on, through
the gamut of Clinics, Dispensaries, etc.—a new world, my masters,
which a well organised Health Week can bring home to Mr. and Mrs.
John Bull.
It must be inborn upon the citizen that to a very large extent
disease is preventable, and it rests with him, and not with the other
man, to see that it is prevented.
The central feature of Health Week is the Exhibition, held in
Deptford in the Borough Hall. The following brief descriptions of the
stalls may be useful to beginners.
A Dental Stall is imperative. Consult the Maternity and Child
Welfare or school dentist, usually the same officer, as to this exhibit.
Get in touch with a big firm such as Messrs. D. & W. Gibbs, City