PEDIATRICS Vol. 61 No. 3 March 1978, pp. 478
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DEMYSTIFICATION OF MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY

H. Mahler

... it makes good social, economic, and professional sense for countries to take the choice of intervention options nearer to the consumer whenever they have the chance. If I use my diarrhoeal disease example, I would say that making rehydration salts for babies available to mothers in every home is likely to be more useful in the short, medium, and long term than expecting the mother to take the baby to a special centre and have this service done for her. There should be no secret either in the way in which diarrhoeal disease occurs or in its treatment. There appears to be no possible reason why the knowledge and the skills of dealing with it should not go down the professional tree to every household at risk. This is what I mean by "demystification" of medical technology.

There are other possibilities of reversing the trend which is pushing medical action higher up the professional tree. Surely there are immediate opportunities of shifting action downwards at least one step-from teaching hospitals to regional hospitals, from consultants to general practitioners, from general practitioners to nurses, from nurses to mothers?




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