Rural Hygiene and Health Co-operative Societies in Yugoslavia.

Abstract

The health co-operative movement is one of the most recent and also one of the most original branches of the Yugoslav co-operative movement. Its methods, which are based on the collaboration of everyone concerned, and which, beginning with what is immediately possible, steadily widen their range, have brought about within a few years a considerable improvement in the conditions of living of the peasant population. They ham attracted much attention from public health experts who have studied them, and also from economists who are interested in the problem of organising the rural community, and both alike have expressed regret that too little is known about this experiment in Yugoslavia, and also about other similar experiments, such as the anti-malaria co-operative societies in Bengal and the more recent Japanese health co-operative societies. The Serbian Child Welfare Association of America, for instance, stated in one of its reports that this movement «will mean not only a new epoch in the work of improvement of national health in Serbia, but will serve as a model for the foundation of similar public health movements in other, countries.» It is this acknowledged value of the Yugoslav health co-operative societies as a model for other countries that the following article seeks to demonstrate, with the help of information collected on the spot, the writings of Dr. G. Kojic, the founder, of the movement, the book by Dr. B. Konstantinovic and Dr. K. Schneider entitled Principles of Rural Hygiene and Health Co-operatives, and the reports of the Union of Health Co-operative Societies.