Just Finished Reading: Public Health – A Very Short Introduction by Virginia Berridge (FP: 2016)

 

…and finally – one further step up to Public Health. Public Health has meant many things to many people over the centuries – from sanitation to vaccination to sexual health to life-style choices to improving things like diet and combatting smoking (and illegal drug use). But the health of the general population hasn’t always been the focus of the State or other institutions either private or philanthropic. Before the Industrial Revolution (and into the beginnings of that particular cultural and economic upheaval) the general health was considered as either irrelevant or simply too complex and expensive. Only with the coming of the factory and the consequent crowding together of thousands of poorly fed and poorly served workers did the idea of Public Health even enter the minds of people who could do something about it. With plague a thing of the past the urban populations had to deal with things like Cholera and Typhoid instead (to say nothing of Smallpox and Measles) which could spread to the more wealthy areas and their inhabitants. Such efforts to combat disease and improve the general health were not completely selfish (or humanitarian) and improve they did – first with improvements in sanitation, housing codes, reductions in working hours, improvements in food distribution. Not all of this was the concern of Public Health officials but, over time, they had more and more influence and more and more power to make improvements, suggestions and policy recommendations. As other countries followed suite (the main focus of most of this slim volume was on the UK experience with minor forays into the European and American experience) the remit changed, expanded and mutated as earlier problems were solved, new problems arose (like HIV/AIDS) and definitions of Public Health changed or expanded. After 1945 Public Health developed a more global perspective led by organisations like the WHO who, somewhat naively, expected to eliminate the great global killers like Malaria by the end of the 1970’s. Only Smallpox fell to the WHO programme and since then more realistic approaches and aspirations have taken the place of total elimination. Where Public Health goes in the future depends, as does much else, on the will to do things for the general wellbeing of all.

This was the last book in the VSI Pandemic book blitz. Whilst it wasn’t as interesting as some of the others it did offer another perspective on health issues and the importance – as we all now realise – of Public Health organisations and mind-sets in fighting, controlling or simply mitigating health issues that apply to everyone (like Pandemics!). Not surprisingly countries with robust Public Health policies and practices generally do better in any health crisis than countries who do not. Public Health is important and should be, at least in my opinion, a central part of any advanced society. A State should seek to look after its citizens in the best way that it can for a whole host of reasons. An adequately funded and resourced Public Health system is a very good place to start. Reasonable.

We’re now back to normal for a while until the mood takes me into another Blitz read. I already have the next one lined up and two more after that in the pipeline. But I’ll be moving away from science based VSI for a while if only to rest my brain for a bit.