View report page

19
There can be no doubt that the National Health Servioe is
the greatest and most comprehensive scheme of public medical
provision ever to be put into operation in any country. It has
banished from countless homes one of the great sources of fear—
fear of disease and the consequent impoverishment of family
resources. It is a most salutary change for people, especially
poor people, to know that they can avail themselves of all the
resources of modern medical treatment (including specialist and
hospital treatment) free of charge.
The declared intention of the National Health Service Act was
" to secure improvement in the physical and mental
health of the people of England and Wales and the
prevention, diagnosis and treatment of illness " ;
but with the passage of time it is becoming increasingly apparent
that the so-called Health Service is much more concerned with
the treatment of illness than with the promotion of health.
Knowing as we do that some of the greatest and most salutary
advances in human health and happiness have been made in the
realm of preventive medicine, and that it is much more economic
to spend time and money on the prevention of disease than on
its cure, widespread surprise is felt and expressed that the service
should be devoting such overwhelming importance and expenditure
to the cure of disease and such scant attention to its prevention.
As far as cost is concerned, the most economical form of medical
provision is preventive medicine, by far the most expensive being
hospital provision.
The aim of preventive medicine is not to cure established
disease, but to prevent disease from occurring ; not to build larger
and better hospitals, but to close them for want of patients. There
is nothing spectacular and dramatic in prevention, which becomes
" news " only when something goes wrong.
The main defect in administration of the Act is that there are
three independently constituted authorities—local health authorities,
hospital management committees and executive councils—
all dealing with different aspects of the same problem. For
instance, there are now three independently constituted and
unco-ordinated bodies concerned with maternity; and in none
of the three is maternity the main function. It is to be hoped
that there may be devised some method of co-ordinating the work
of the three independently appointed and administered authorities
responsible for the National Health Service.