Japanese Rural Medicine and Health Activities in Retrospect / 日本農村医学会雑誌

ABSTRACT

Looking back on the history of the Japanese Association of Rural Medicine on the occasion of its 44th general meeting, I am overwhelmed with deep emotion. Things have changed dramatically during the period, and our health activities by reaching out into the communities in the middle of nowhere are quite different from what they used to be.<BR>The activities our association has evolved is multifarious. But, in this paper, I dwell on the results of the health screening project, one of our association's major themes, with reference to the health reports presented at the past meetings by its members.<BR>In the early period, the outreach program emphasized the improvement of the living environment and the backward character of morbidity derived from poverty and difficulty of access, while physicals and health education were carried out. In later years, with the nation's rapid economic growth, the network of roads was remarkably expanded. However, material affluence has given rise to new types of health hazard and the incidence of adult diseases in a developed society is threatening the lives of rural inhabitante. In the meantime, the state of things surrounding medical care services has also been improved. Nonetheless, there are a mountain of issues with the advent of an aging society. They include an increase in the number of households with aged people alone in parallel with an increase in the number of nuclear families and the aging of those engaged in farming. The welfare of the aged has now become one of the primary issues we have to grapple with.<BR>This paper reviews the changes in the results of health checkups with the changing times and themes taken up in the scientific sessions of the annual meetings.