ACTIVITIES

Public Health activities can be seen to fall into the following seven categories:

1. Activities that must be conducted on a community basis:
   1. Supervision of community food, water, and milk supplies as well as medication, household items, toys, and recreational equipment.
   2. Insect, Rodent, and other Vector control.
   3. Environmental pollution including atmospheric, soil, and aquatic pollution control, prevention of radiation hazards; and noise abatement.
2. Activities designed for prevention of illness, disability, or premature death from:
   1. Communicable Diseases, including Parasitic Infestations.
   2. Dietary Deficiencies or Excesses.
   3. Behavioural disorders, including alcoholism, drug habituation, narcotic addiction, certain aspects of delinquency, and suicide.
   4. Mental illness, including mental retardation.
   5. Allergic manifestations and their community sources.
   6. Acute and chronic respiratory diseases.
   7. Nepotistic diseases.
   8. Cardiac and Cerebro-Vascular diseases.
   9. Metabolic diseases.
   10. Certain hereditary or genetic conditions.
   11. Occupational diseases.
   12. Home, vehicular, and industrial accidents.
   13. Dental disorders, including dental caries and periodontal disease.
   14. Certain risks of maternity, and development.
3. Activities related to comprehensive health care:
   1. Promotion of development, availability, and quality of health personnel, facilities, and services in the broadest sense.
   2. Operation of programs for early detection of disease.
   3. Promotion and operation of emergency medical service system.
   4. Promotion and operations of treatment centres, varying from disease speciality clinics to comprehensive health centres and hospitals.
   5. Facilitation of and participation in postgraduate and continuing health professional education.

4. Activities concerned with collection, preservation, analysis, and use of vital records.
5. Public education and motivation in personal and community health.
6. Comprehensive health planning, management, and evaluation.
7. Research ? scientific, technical, and administrative."

Reviewing the above authentic declarations, the jurisdiction, scope, and function of the field becomes apparent. It may be concluded that Public Health is a spectrum of functions which together form the whole. There are 17 recognised sub?specialities, which if grouped in divisions would be as follows:

1. Public Health.
This speciality concerns with Planning, Policy, Rules, Regulations, Management, Hospital Administration, Project Management, Health Economics, Finance, Budgeting, and Accounting, Quality Assurance, Manpower Development (Medical/Health Professional Education), Operations Research, Demography, Social Medicine, Specific Preventive Programmes such as Emergency and Disaster Services and Control Systems, Community Mental Health, Occupational Health, etc, and all related areas.

2. Epidemiology.
This speciality concerns with the study of health related events (disease, health hazards), in relation to the population, their dynamics, and determinants. The diagnosis and control of infectious disease, non?infectious diseases, applied medical microbiology, entomology, parasitology, and related disciplines.

3. Family Health.
This speciality relates to the disciplines which are required to ensure health promotion, protection, and services for families, with particular reference to the groups which are more vulnerable, e.g. women, & children. The main sections include Reproductive Health, Child Health (Preventive Paediatrics), Nutrition & Dietetics, Family Medicine, and related disciplines.

4. Primary Health Care.
This is the approach / strategy on which our whole public sector health system is based, and the pivot around which all health care and health manpower programmes have to develop.

5. Emergency & Disaster Medical Services.
This is a team sub?speciality. And concerns with the design, management, and delivery, of medical & health care in emergency and disaster situations.

6. Environmental and Occupational Health.
This speciality concerns with the protection and prevention of environmental health hazards. This is now merging with Occupational Health which is the speciality related to prevention and control of health hazards in the work place.

The dilemma of the subject is this that there has been an absolute lack of adequately qualified manpower in the field of Public Health in Balochistan. Due to this, when the present generation of qualified Public Health Physicians took up the task of establishing the field and undertaking long term reorganisation initiatives, the situation was seen as out of place and a threat, with the dire consequences that the Health System in Balochistan is now forced to face, and in particular the problems generated for the very existence of the IPH. The present dilemma is due also to the fact that the true understanding of the subject is still lacking amongst even the so called 'elite' of the health sector in Balochistan.