Rural Hospitals

The need and value of rural hospitals in the U. S. have been so great that the Department of Agriculture has made a national survey, the report of which it made public last week.

Iowa 17 years ago started a movement for them. Its legislature realized that maternity and infant mortality was far greater than need be, passed a law permitting counties to levy taxes for county hospitals. Since then 16 other states have followed this excellent example.

In the U. S. annually 750,000 women go through childbirth without medical attention. Most of them live on farms. Their mortality rate is high. Their children also show a high rate of death and malformation, results that could be blocked to a great extent by adequate and convenient hospital facilities.

There live in rural territory 50,000,000 people. Those isolated especially in the mountain regions, suffer considerably from poor light and insufficient heat in their homes, ignorance of proper food preparations, ignorance of the transmission of diseases, absence of sanitation, early marriages with a high death rate for mothers and children, and the lack of doctors, nurses, hospitals, clinics and dispensaries. In one North Carolina county 5,000 people, half of the population, were examined for hookworm; 42% were infected. Trachoma, the highly infectious eye disease, was present in 2.3% of 816 children seen.

The Department of Agriculture recommends that hospitals be created as county institutions. Where the county is too poor, it suggests that a medical district be created by the co-operation of two or more counties. Town hospitals should spread news of their facilities to the surrounding farms.