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43
HEALTH EDUCATION
The proposed re-organisation of the National Health Service, based
on an integral health care delivery system may represent an opportune
time to attempt some evaluation and unification of health education in
this country. It is a service which varies considerably in scope and outlook
throughout local authorities, in whom, as part of the preventive health
service, it is at present invested. One of the aims of health education as
defined by the World Health Organisation Expert Committee, is to equip
people with knowledge and skills that they can use to solve their health
problems.
To date, prevention has been a major aspect of health education,
embracing the dissemination of information in respect of health hazards
to the community at large, very often in general terms, assuming that
individuals will be motivated to take positive action on their own behalf.
This has not always succeeded where individual behavioural change is
involved, as in the case of smoking and health where the cause—effect
relationship is based on statistical evidence, which may be rejected by a
sceptical society, there being no guarantee that the heavy smoker will
contract lung cancer. Conversely immunisation and cervical cytology,
medically proven, have been socially accepted.
The majority of the population, to whom information is directed,
constitute average healthy people and there is little personal contact
between the health educator and the recipients. It is only when a person
becomes ill and seeks treatment that a person to person relationship is
established; this time with the medical profession, whose primary role is
curative. Yet this may be the time when a person needs and is more
receptive to health education, but few G.P's or consultants have the time
to devote to education.
It remains to be seen, therefore, whether in 1974 health education
will be left to develop as a separate entity, or whether, with integration it
will form part of the health care system, involving the medical profession
at the curative and post curative stages.
During 1972 the Council inaugurated a Home Safety Sub-Committee
the composition of which is elected Councillors, together with representatives
of those public utilities, professions and organisations interested
in the Home Safety movement. The latest confirmed statistics as classified
by the Registrar General indicate a drop in the total number of deaths in
England and Wales due to home accidents from 6614, in the year 1968 to
6,245 in 1971. This reduction is reflected in those categories due to burns
and scalds (-11.8%); suffocation and choking (-13.6%); and falls
(—2.2%). The figure in respect of all poisoning deaths (—12.2%) might
be considered equally encouraging until further analysis reveals that this
was entirely due to the introduction of non-toxic natural gas, as a result
of which deaths from piped gas fell by 58%. In fact deaths from medicinal
drugs rose by 31.8%. It was opportune therefore that the first major