Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1922-10-07
County Health Serv;ce, and
Whit It Bef;des to Georo;n

E T augurs well for Georgia and other
States whose population is mainly
rural that public health endeavors,
which once centered almost entirely in cit
/ les, are now developing apace in the country
sides and smaller towns. In one hundred
and ninety-two counties, at the close of the
last twevemonth, public health work was
| being conducted on a full-time basis. This
| marked substantial progress as compared
with the year preceding, but indications are
that 1922 will show still more notable gains.
Such service spreads swiftly wherever it
is planted, If there be any soil of public in
telligence and public conscience in which its
most eloquently for it's extension. In Ala
bama, by way of example, typhoid fever de-
creased sixty per cent between 1917 and
1921, period within which forty-tlve per
cent of the States inhabitants were vouch-
safed the protecting care OF county health
departments. ''In section of Smith coun-
ty, Tennessee" says the report Of the Inter
national Health Board of the Rockefeller
Foundation, "whero for many years there
had been high incidence Of typhoid fever,
a remarkable reduction resulted from an in
tensive vaccination campaign in 1919. Dur
ing the four-year period from 1916 to 1919,
inclusive there were in this area tWenty-one
deaths from typhoid fever and more than
case of the disease was reported" To the
educative, preventive and constructive Work
of rural health departments these gratifying
results ara chiefly asc-ibed. So with malaria,
so with smallpox, diphtheria and other cpl
demics-public health service has m1n1mlZed
the death rate, saved untold sums of money,
and spared thousands Of rural homes the
shadow which elsewise would have fallen.
The programs of the these departments
comprise, in the main, community health
| Ro4; froJ 0p 10
BILE diseases, and child and adult hygiene.
Other activities may be added as occasion
suggests and means permit; or, some OF these
lay be omitted in the earlier and leanly sup
ported stages of the enterprise. Approprla-
tions for county health department may be
| most meager at the outset but as the work
unfolds and reveals itself to the popular
mind, they are well-nigh certain to increase.
Touching the personnel and the budget or
the average rural health department, the In
ternational Health Board points out that the
staff consists of health officer, sanitary
inspector, an office assistant, and pubic
health nurse, all of whom serve regularly
throughout the year. 1.-THE usual annual
budget for a county Of average size IS ten
thousand dollars, though the amount may
be increased in the case of larger or more
prosperous counties, or be reduced in coun-
ties whose population is small or resources
limited. Sometimes two or more sparsely
separated counties combine to operate
n6dlLn department.. ulo 10 pOl4Auo0ApAO IL
, Georgia under the Ellis Public Health Act,
providing for the establishment of sanitary
districts in which counties may co-work for
their common interests or may proceed each
under it's own health administration in so far
| as local matters are Concerned. No county IN
| this Commonwealth is so impoverished that 1t
cannot afford some sort OF public health serV-
ice: in truth, none can afford to be without
such service.
| Particularly worth noting Is the statemo ut
| of the International Board that the WORK or
| county department invariably stimulates
private expenditures for sanitary and other
of the official budgets" Thus in Tazwell
county, Virginia, citizens last year expended
| on their own accounts, within a period OF
! four months, some sixty thousand dollars for
sanitary improvements recommended by the
| health department, whose own budget came
to only three thousand dollars. So does
little leaven the whole lump.
| There is no calculating the gains that will
accrue to Georgia, gains of prosperity, OF
progress and of human happiness, through
the maintenance Of public health services for
rural districts. How modest soever the be-
| ginning of such work, how scant the means
| for it's financing, it ought to be undertaken
| in every county, from the mountain tops to
the tides. Given the opportunity, it will dem
| onstrate it's value so strikingly that no urg-
| ing will be needed for it's expansion. 1t will
| save millions of money and mult1tudes Of
| lives; it will conserve that greatest of all our
resources, human energy; and will safeguard
| that greatest of all treasures human content
ment and joy. ANY county not yet provided
with this service will do well to advise now
with the State Board of Health, from which
counsel and aid will be literally forthcoming.