MEDICAL CARE AND PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICES

Medical care applies to the individual, and public health to the community. One is the concentrated application of diagnosis and treatment for the life, the comfort of a patient, and includes guidance in health as for motherhood, infancy, childhood and old age.Public health services, provided by the community through its local government and the local department of health, are concerned with the prevention of diseases of all kinds. Some are controlled by sanitary authority, but the majority of preventable diseases are dealt with by public health education.It is not the function of the health department to treat the sick. The family physicians, the hospitals and dispensaries provide for medical care. Medical care of the sick and public health protection are two parallel activities to make use of medical science, one for treatment, the other for prevention of disease.     

MEDICAL PREPAREDNESS FOR DISASTER

The Federal Civil Defense Administration has been consolidated under the President''s Reorganization Plan No. 1 of 1958 with the Office of Defense Mobilization. The new organization, the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization, should be able to deal more efficiently with the problem of mobilization and management of all resources and production of the nation in time of disaster. As preparation for possible enemy attack, organized plans entailing training, supplies, equipment and communications for use in major peacetime disasters—floods, earthquakes, tornado damage—should be carried forward vigorously. Apathy must be overcome. From the local to the highest level all civil defense and disaster plans must be developed and kept flexible enough to be operable during any kind of emergency.Physicians must learn as much as they can about the mass care of casualties, how to survive under the most trying of circumstances. Drills in dealing with simulated disaster are of utmost importance for finding out ahead of time what must be done and the personnel and supplies needed for doing it.     

DISASTER CARE FOR 15 MILLION CALIFORNIANS

The urgency of the crisis following a nuclear attack staggers the imagination. We would have thousands or millions of survivors making a desperate struggle to survive. Safe water supplies and waste-disposal systems would be gone. In some areas, there would be little or no food or shelter.Yet California has already manned a medical arsenal that is second to none in the United States. We have stored 115 emergency hospitals at strategic points, and through the county medical associations we have appointed cadres including physicians, nurses and technicians. Plans have been made for workers who will assist in setting up the hospitals and first aid stations.In our future operations we will continue to place strong emphasis on the medical phase of our program of disaster care.The program would be just as essential in the event of major natural disaster as nuclear war.Our objective is a simple one. We are seeking to preserve the human resources which are necessary for recovery.California''s medical profession, with the allied professions of nursing and technical skills, has a vital interest in continuing operations to the maximum extent even under the most trying conditions.