From the introduction to the Resolutions:
“With our constituent Societies thus strengthened, we feel that the Medical Programme as outlined in the resolutions from that section may be most effectively carried on, embracing as it does the important features of the care and welfare of mothers and children, the treatment and control of tuberculosis and other infectious and contagious diseases and the improvement of sanitation, the , standardisation of vital statistics, and the encouragement of the development of scientific study along practical lines affecting the public health. We advocate through these Resolutions the extension of nursing service in all its branches covering the community, the home and the school as well as along more firmly established lines”.
Resolutions
Tuberculosis.
So far as concerns the participation of the League in the world-campaign against Tuberculosis, the Medical Advisory Board , basing its opinion upon the Programme of the Cannes Conference, consider that the League should proceed to create, in certain districts of one of several of the countries of Europe that are most seriously affected with Tuberculosis, an experimental organisation on a more or less limited basis, expressing in its constitutional part of the general programme. This part should include:
- A preliminary survey of latent tuberculosis as well as of open infection in the entire population of some chosen districts, according to age, sex; profession and social groups;
- A statistical study of tuberculosis mortality and of the various forms and localisations of the disease (in co-operation with the local public health authority);
- The establishment of an adequate number of dispensaries managed by specially trained physicians and visiting nurses;
- The organisation of sanatoria for isolation of advanced cases and for treatment of curable cases;
- The creation of preventoria and open air schools for children;
- The education of the medical profession as well as of the general public regarding the social fight against tuberculosis.
* Resolved; that the League organise an anti-tuberculosis demonstration in one or several countries where this demonstration would be particularly desirable and where the national Red Cross Society would bind itself to continue and to develop the movement undertaken”.
“Child Welfare
Puericulture (Child Welfare) consists not only in the care of sick children, but more especially in the measures as a whole to be adopted with regard to children before and after birth (pre-natal, natal and post-natal), hygiene of pregnancy and nourishment of the mother; hygiene of infancy and nursing; hygiene of early childhood; supervision of growth and protection from communicable diseases, more especially tuberculosis, in order to ensure normal development and avoid illness.
…
National Red Cross Societies should take measures to develop among nurses training in puericulture. The League should, in conformity with its resources, participate in this activity, either by creating or assisting in the creation of schools of puericulture or Child Welfare Centres, or by providing scholarships for doctors and nurses at existing schools of puericulture, such as the Franco-American School of the Faculty of Medicine in Paris or similar schools in other countries, and finally by the dissemination of the means of educative propaganda among the people.”
“Venereal Diseases.
The Medical Advisory Board consider that it would be desirable for the League to devote its attention to the question of education in sex-hygiene and antivenereal propaganda. The Board consider besides that it would be suitable for the League to study the means by which it would be possible to reduce the cost of specifically anti-syphilitic drugs which bring about the prompt disappearance of contagious lesions.
The Board consider that the diffusion of moral and physiological knowledge and of the ideals of purity and integrity of family life cannot be too much encouraged.
Resolved that, whereas venereal diseases are prevalent and dangerous communicable infections against which science has developed a practical programme for eradication, the League (a) recommend to all national Reel Cross Societies the desirability of holding annually, or at frequent intervals, regional conferences upon this subject for friendly review and criticism of the measures proposed, and (b] tender its services to all countries desiring to participate in the organisation of such regional conferences.
“Nursing.
* Resolved that the League urge the establishment in Europe of one or more model Training Schools for Public Health Nurses, but that until this can be realised, there be founded under the supervision of the League, Nursing Scholarships for the national Red Cross Societies for those countries where no such facilities exist in a city chosen as being most appropriate”.
