Madam, - As I was leaving the recent meeting of the Irish Medical Organisation in Killarney, a local lady asked me about the work of public health doctors.
I explained that some are trained to be consultants in public health medicine and others are medical officers in community health services. We deal with infectious outbreaks such as meningitis, measles, TB or food poisoning, oversee vaccination programmes, work as "medical detectives" to find out if environmental hazards cause ill-health in local communities, examine patterns of disease and figure out how best to tackle them, and help our colleagues to provide top-quality care. We help plan, deliver and evaluate services.
In our "secret" war on disease and disability, our main weapon is information rather than the stethoscope, drug or the knife. But the results are just the same: people live longer and more healthily. Public health has always stood in the line of fire between the plague of the day and the public, and the work can sometimes be deadly dangerous. Those awful scourges of older times such as smallpox and diphtheria have been replaced by those of cancer, heart disease and accidents. "New" killer infections such as Legionnaires' Disease and SARS have appeared.
I went on to say that a modern Ireland needs a modern and safe public health service to cope with the changing times. Almost nothing frightens the public more than the spectre of an infectious disease or toxic hazard that appears to be poorly understood and out of control. Unfortunately, there has been no good way to contact us outside office hours, even for dire emergencies.
Finally, I added that our nation's ability to tackle future public health threats, many of which will be totally unexpected, depends on attracting and retaining the brightest and best into public health medicine, a profession that I find both fascinating and challenging.
She pondered on all this a moment and said: "So you beaver away behind the scenes trying to fix the tricky health problems of the day to prevent worse things happening tomorrow. I suppose if it works out well, we hear little about it. As far as I can see, the sooner you get the tools you need to do your work properly, the sooner I can rest a little easier knowing you are watching over me - even while I dream. You are the Angels of Health." - Yours, etc.,
Dr HOWARD JOHNSON, Foxrock, Dublin 18.
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Madam, - Roisin Healy writes (May 8th) that "the public health doctors are over 80 per cent female".
This must come as a grave shock to those public health doctors who were under the impression that they were 100 per cent male. - Yours, etc.,
PADRAIG S. DOYLE, Pine Valley Avenue, Dublin 16.