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MODERN SOCIAL HYGIENE PROBLEMS

Author: Kolyo Gargov

Social hygiene, considered as a science dealing with social problems in medicine, finds a broad-scale application in the party policy and has a great theoretical and practical importance for public health. This imposes a determination of its subject and contents. With reference to the works of Gerfeldt, Leavell and Clark, Brockington, Grundy, Winter, etc. and the problems of public health in the present stage of development, a social hygiene program is proposed. In the general part of the social hygiene program the following problems should be discussed in the scientific light of dialectical materialism: health as a social-biologic phenomenon and its determining factors; methods for studying the population’s health; theoretical background of public health; principal forms and trends in public health activity /prophylaxis, treatment, rehabilitation/; elements and basic principles of health services; culture and health; public health economics; public health planning; social hygiene legislation; medical personnel; international health activity. The contents of the special part will be modified in accordance with the practical tasks of public health. At present it could include the following themes: social hygiene problems of the struggle for the eradication of infectious and parasitic diseases; chronic diseases as a major public health problem; maternity protection; socialpediatrics; traumatism; mental health; social geriatrics; sex education problems; physical culture and its hygienic value; medical architectural problems; application of ionizing radiations in practice, etc.

Social hygiene is designed to play an integrating part among the other medical disciplines, providing a trend in medical theory and practice. On the other hand the specialist in social hygiene is the connecting link between physicians, economists and sociologists, because social hygiene avails itself of the methods and achievements of social sciences on a large scale.

In the field of theory, social hygiene should be able to prove that only the harmony of social system and people’s health interests as achieved in the conditions of socialism and communism will provide the highest possible health standard to the working people. Moreover it should supply practical public health with the correct tactics regarding the specific social hygiene problems.

CONTENTS

1. Social hygiene and socialist welfare.

- subject of social hygiene.

- relations of social hygiene with other medical and non-medical sciences.

- assignment of social hygiene.

2. Global systems of public health care and their perspectives.

- role of public health in society.

- features of modern capitalist public health care.

- Soviet public health care.

- social hygiene problems of the transition to communism.

3. Prophylaxis in health care.

- definition.

- social hygiene foundation of prophylaxis.

- prophylaxis and “clinical” specialities.

- organizational questions of prophylaxis.

4. International cooperation in health care.

- historical background.

- World Health Organization.

- other organisations having impact on international health relation.

5. Social hygiene problems of old age.

- demographic data.

- social hygiene problems of old age.

- welfare of old people.

6. Chronic diseases as social hygiene problem.

- occurrence of chronic diseases.

7. Social hygiene problems with nuclear energy.

- sources of ionising radiation.

- legislative issues.

- medico sanitary control.

8. History of dispensarization.