View report page

12
Extract from "Municipal Engineering" dated 3rd March, 1950.
' From the Desk of a "M.O.H."
RELIEVED OF "PERSONAL SERVICES," LOCAL HEALTH DEPARTMENTS
HAVE CHANCE TO DEVELOP NEW ENVIRONMENTAL WORK.
"Though there has been a tendency on the part of many authorities
and medical officers of health in particular to adopt an all-is-lost tone
because they have been deprived of maternity and child welfare and other
services on the personal side and to shake a gloomy head over the fact
that in the main only environmental hygiene remained, I have never
really been able to understand why.
The Wringing of Hands
As a matter of fact, for some time before the appointed day and amid
all the wringing of hands and mournful cries, people like Professor Parry,
the then President of the Society of Medical Officers of Health, were
asking what all the fuss was about. In relation to the environment of the
people there was much to be done. Indeed, as anyone can see, there is
to-day a vast amount to be done, much of it most appropriately by and
under the direction of the medical health officer. After all, why should
health authorities be uneasy because they are to be what some call
"sanitary authorities"? That was what they were created to be and
environmental work was what, in the first instance, they were given to do.
All these other things under special personal health "schemes" were
more or less side lines and were taken on largely to back up the basic
environmental work, which had produced such wonderful results, such as
the disappearance complete of typhus and practically complete of typhoid
and profound change and modifications in the characteristics of certain
of the infectious diseases. To my mind, the environmentalists, the medical
and non-medical health officers, who, in the earlier days, worked so well
together, have never been given the credit they deserve. I can remember
so many splendid medical officers of health, so many grand sanitary
inspectors of the old school, personalities every one of them.
Much as they did, however, they did not manage to do all. Furthermore,
other needs on the environmental side have arisen through wars
and other troubles. They are all there to be wrestled with and to be
overcome so that the people may be healthier and happier."