View report page

Links with the local schools have been strengthened through the Divisional
Officer (Education) and headteachers. Certain schools have welcomed the help
of the Department in planning courses covering a range of biological studies,
including hygiene in its widest context. There has been an increase in
seminars and talks given by members of staffs at schools. Included in the
syllabuses, sex hygiene instruction is now offered to the lower age groups in
secondary schools. Mothercraft and other allied topics are presented at
welfare centres in day sessions, and by demand to mixed groups at night
in some centres. These centres do play a role as foci for community activities
which is gratifying and encouraging to the enthusiastic staff who often put in
work beyond the normal call of duty to meet this demand.
The appointment of a professional health education officer will advance
the ordered pianning of syl1abuses and the application of evaluated techniques.
Topics receiving close attention are the Venereal Diseases, Tuberculosis, and
the relationship of smoking to the incidence of lung cancer. In respect of
the two former, the Borough has a high incidence rate correlated to a degree
with the immigrant section of the population. Effective health education is
difficult enough with the indigenous population, but the task is formidable
when dealing with Asiatic illiterate persons who are culturally alienated. In
co-operation with a local committee set up to further the integration into the
community of immigrants, the health education officer is attempting with small
groups to inculcate simple rules of hygiene and aids to healthy living in our
society. The printed word, and didactic method achieve little here for the
illiterates do not understand, neither do the literates comprehend the rules
of a foreign culture. A combination of pictorial demonstrations and personal
contact using an interpreter appears the ideal method to get a message across.
Of course, fortunate]y the younger immigrant generation at school acquires both
literacy and the cultural standards more rapidly and easily.
The expansion of public health responsibility for pre-symptomatic diagnosis
of disease, is opening up a wider field. The provision of 'well women* clinics
in Tower Hamlets,teaching self-examination of breasts, taking cervical smears,
and testing urine is also creating a public demand for increased knowledge in the
sphere of preventive and 'positive' health. Letters are received from members
of the public seeking early appointments at our clinics, expressing their need
to exorcise long held fears of cancer often originating in experiences of the
effects of the cancerous process in relatives. A service to satisfy the
superficial presenting demand can only be part of the answer. To allay fears and
dispel ignorance, so releasing needlessly wasted mental energy for more active
living, is one of the challenges to our health education programmes.
30.