UDC 614:374

Issues in the Promotion of Medical and Hygienic Knowledge at the Present Stage

E. G. Karmanova and L. P. Zabolotskaya

Central Research Institute of Health Education, Moscow

The resolution of the June 1963 Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU on the immediate tasks of ideological work includes an appeal to the Soviet intelligentsia, stating: “The Plenum attaches the greatest importance to the participation of the intelligentsia in ideological work: schoolteachers, instructors, engineers and technical personnel, agronomists, physicians, and figures in literature, art, and the press. The Party calls upon the Soviet intelligentsia to contribute still more actively to the spiritual wealth of Soviet society and to help the Party shape the communist worldview of the people.”

The promotion of medical and hygienic knowledge is an important part of ideological work, an integral component of the work of medical professionals, and their professional and public duty.

Given that the Soviet Union has approximately 2 million physicians and mid-level medical personnel, it is clear what a vast force the health service has at its disposal to participate actively in the ideological work of educating conscientious, highly educated people and a physically robust younger generation capable of combating prejudice and superstition, particularly in matters of health.

Industrial and technical training is widespread in the country’s industry and agriculture, encompassing workers, foremen, engineering and technical personnel, selected groups of collective farmers and state-farm workers, as well as people newly entering the workforce. This also makes it possible to promote hygiene more effectively. Work along these lines is already under way in industrial centers such as Chelyabinsk, Dnepropetrovsk, Lugansk, Sverdlovsk, Gorky, Volgograd, and Chernovtsy, and in many other cities. Economic councils, territorial production administrations for collective and state farms, trade union organizations, and others are participating.

Many enterprise managers, recognizing the importance of hygiene training for workers and engineering and technical personnel, give the matter serious attention. Dnepropetrovsk Oblast provides a positive example. At enterprises in the oblast, hygiene instruction for workers is well organized, both during initial induction and in various advanced training courses.

This attitude toward workers’ hygiene training, however, is far from universal. Our task, therefore, is to expand and improve such training for workers in all branches of industry, making use of the industrial and technical training network. Occupational hygiene courses are especially necessary for agricultural workers.

The Central Institute of Health Education, together with the Kiev Institute of Occupational Hygiene and Occupational Diseases, has developed curricula for one-year advanced training courses for collective-farm chairmen and state-farm directors, three-month advanced training courses for agricultural specialists, and schools for agricultural machinery operators and livestock workers. The curricula take account of current requirements in agricultural production. They cover in detail the following topics: occupational hygiene for machinery operators and livestock workers engaged in mechanized and nonmechanized work, as well as work with pesticides; first aid in accidents; personal and public hygiene; basic information about infectious diseases; prevention of occupational diseases; and other subjects.

The curricula have been agreed upon with the USSR Ministry of Agriculture and approved by the USSR Ministry of Health. Their implementation will make it possible to improve hygiene instruction for rural workers considerably.

Noteworthy experience in carrying out such work has already been accumulated. In Volgograd Oblast, for example, ongoing training for agricultural specialists and managers has been organized at the Agricultural Institute. The Department of General Hygiene of the Volgograd Medical Institute, the oblast sanitary and epidemiological station, and the oblast traumatologist have been enlisted in this work. The House of Health Education also plays a major role. Courses of varying duration are offered in the oblast for agricultural specialists. Each course includes health-protection instruction, ranging from 10 to 16 hours. Several thousand participants complete these ongoing courses each year.

The Chernivtsi region provides one example: there, large-scale hygiene education for the rural population is conducted through a 10-hour program. In the first half of 1962 alone, approximately 110,000 people completed the courses. The results were endorsed by the regional committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Chernivtsi regional executive committee.

The success of hygiene education among different population groups depends to a large extent on the active participation not only of personnel at medical and preventive care institutions, but also of hygienists, especially those working at sanitary and epidemiological stations.

The June Plenum placed particular emphasis on the role of the school in educating the new person. Naturally, we who work in public health are especially concerned with the problems of hygiene education for the younger generation.

Many years of experience in a number of Soviet cities have demonstrated the value of teaching the fundamentals of hygiene in primary grades as “health protection” lessons and in the upper grades as part of the biology course. The revision of hygiene education curricula for pupils was carried out by staff of the Institute of Health Education in collaboration with the Ministry of Education of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR).

In Ukraine, Belarus, other republics, and a number of regions and cities of the RSFSR, hygiene instruction for pupils has not yet become firmly established in the daily life of schools, especially in rural areas, and is not always combined with the everyday development of healthy habits in children.

A distinctive feature of health education in schools is that the teacher is its principal agent. Medical workers, and hygienists in particular, therefore have the important responsibility of ensuring that teachers receive appropriate training in school hygiene and hygiene education, and of advising them on health protection in curricular and extracurricular work.

The country’s high literacy rate makes it possible to make extensive use of print, including popular science literature, for educational outreach.

In 1962, approximately 20 million copies of popular science books were published in the Soviet Union. This might seem an impressive figure. But when one considers that the country has 382,000 libraries, 128,000 clubs, and approximately 27,000 medical and preventive care institutions, the vital need to increase sharply the publication of popular science literature becomes clear.

Hygiene is inadequately represented among the subjects covered in popular science literature published both centrally and locally.

Hygiene societies, research hygienists, and practitioners can do much to improve this situation. Meetings of scientific societies should discuss the subjects and quality of popular science books, as well as measures to improve the publication of popular works on hygiene, especially in the languages of the various nationalities.

A number of health education centers have shown valuable initiative by making systematic use of the local press, publishing individual articles under the heading “Doctor’s Advice.” In the Murmansk and Stavropol regions, as well as in the Azerbaijani and Armenian Soviet Socialist Republics, regional and district newspapers regularly publish health protection materials on special pages or inserts.

The quality of educational outreach through the press will be considerably higher if physicians specializing in hygiene themselves contribute more frequently to mass-circulation publications.

In recent years, radio and television have come into wider use. In the overwhelming majority of regions, territories, and republics, radio regularly broadcasts talks and lectures by physicians, answers to listeners’ questions, and the like. Unfortunately, hygiene issues,

are not represented as we would wish or as they should be. Broadcasts still devote most of their attention to combating various diseases rather than promoting healthy lifestyles, proper nutrition, rational ways of working and resting, and the importance of physical exercise and hardening the body. Here, physicians specializing in hygiene can and should help. What is needed is their creative initiative, greater activity, and persistence. In some places, public editorial boards for medical broadcasts have already been established at radio committees. If hygiene societies make use of these new arrangements, they will accomplish a great and important task.

It is no less important to use television for health education. At present, more than 60 television studios across the country regularly broadcast programs on health protection. Health education centers should work through local cultural departments to secure airtime for programs on sanitary and hygiene topics, and should also help establish public editorial boards at television studios or joint editorial boards for radio and television. Members of hygiene societies can play a very active part in this work. With their help, special television programs for children, young people, and women can be broadcast regularly, acquainting viewers with the achievements of Soviet health care and new developments in hygiene research and practice.

By expanding education on hygiene and improving its quality, we must convincingly demonstrate to the public that the proper organization of work, daily life, and rest provides the means to achieve longevity, preserve and strengthen health, and maintain a high capacity for work.

There is also a pressing need to revise health education training programs for medical personnel so that young physicians, feldshers, and midwives clearly understand how health education should be conducted and are well versed in its methods and tools.

Discussion of this important issue at meetings of hygiene societies at the national and local levels, together with the development of specific measures to improve the training of physicians and midlevel medical personnel in the dissemination of medical and hygiene knowledge, will undoubtedly help improve this work.

Received November 25, 1963.