Health > Intergovernmental conference of Far-Eastern countries on rural hygiene : report by the Preparatory Committee

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The following is the definition of a rural health centre given
by the European Conference on Rural Hygiene in 1931 :
“ The rural health centre may be defined as an institution
for the promotion of the health and welfare of the people in
a given area, which seeks to achieve its purpose by grouping
under one roof or co-ordinating in some other manner, under
the direction of the health officer, all the health work of that
area, together with such welfare and relief organisations as may
be related to the general public health work.
“ In rural districts where such public health work has been
organised for some time, it may be difficult to group all health
activities under one roof or in the same organisation.
Nevertheless, an attempt should be made to co-ordinate the
work of existing agencies in the most effective way.
“ On the other hand, where a modern public health
organisation is to be created in new territory,1 the health
centre, as defined above, is the best method of attaining the
desired result.”
Although forming an integral part of the general health
organisation and designed mainly for purposes of social
preventive medecine, the centre will nevertheless have to
undertake curative treatment in districts in which there are not
enough doctors to give the population the necessary attention.
The system of rural health centres, which is a very attractive
one for the East, has already been applied there in a number of
countries, and this is only the beginning.
In Ceylon, for example, the system of health centres has been
introduced in eight out of sixty-three districts, and it is hoped
to extend it to the whole of the country. The difficulty lies in the
training of staff, since the visiting nurse is the mainspring of the
whole organisation. But very few girls in the country districts
are sufficiently well educated to be trained in these duties, quite
apart from caste prejudices, which are also a factor.
The programmes of the health centres which the Committee
visited are all on much the same lines : there is a tendency to
1 The term “new territory”, as employed here, implies that an
effective health service in the modern sense does not exist.