Object of the County
Health Work
The State Bureau of County Health was started July 1, 1917,
by an appropriation of $15,000 by the State and a like amount by the
International Health Board. The object of the Bureau is to demonstrate the best
method of conducting County Health work, and at the same time demonstrate to a
County that it is able to maintain an adequately equipped full time Health
department.
The State Bureau is cooperating with Halifax in a three-year
plan of public Health work. The work consists of derinite (that’s what was
written) on the more important Health problems rather than an attempt to cover
the entire field of County Health actively in a short period of time.
The more important units are concerned with:
--Diseases attending soil pollution, such as typhoid fever,
Infant Diarrhea, the dysenteries and hookworm.
--Life Extension Work in which by physical examination the
diseases of adult life may be recognized early and cured or prevented.
--Medical inspection and treatment of school children, the
quarantining of infectious diseases, the prevention of tuberculosis, and
infant Hygiene work.
During the first year of the County Health Department three
units of work will be undertaken: the quarantine, the soil pollution and the
school unit.
The quarantine is the enforcement of the State quarantine
law…. Infections and contagious diseases are required to be reported by the
attending physician or by the householder and in suspicious unreported cases
the health officer may visit a home and investigate. A record of each case will
be kept at the County Health Office and the report is then sent to the State
Board of Health.
…. The work of the school unit is to obtain a record of the
physical condition of every child in the County, and to get as many as possible
of the defectives treated. This is an enforcement of the law enacted by the
General Assembly of 1917, which provides for the physical examination of every
school child, of public school age, at least once in three years. The budget of
the County provides $500 a year to aid in the treatment of defective children,
whose parents are financially unable to provide the necessary attention. ….
The Chief of the State Bureau of Medical Inspection of
schools has promised to furnish a dentist, with a portable dental outfit, for
three months to work especially the rural districts.
The soil pollution unit has been greatly aided by the
sanitary privy law which goes into effect October 1, 1919. But good work can be
done along sanitary lines both in the schools and out, instructing the people
and especially the younger generation in the necessity of sanitary privies and
safe wells, also the drainage of stagnant pools to eradicate the mosquito and
malaria.
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