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Show RURAL HEALTH Small Town Ingenuity Improving Health Condition in Farm Areas More than 18,000 accidental deaths per year occur among farming people in the United States. Farming is the most dangerous dan-gerous occupation a man can enter, even more dangerous then mining, lumbering or construction. construc-tion. Farmers have all the illnesses of city folks but in addition they have this special problem. That's one reason whj farm areas have a special need of doctors and hospital hos-pital facilities. And according to the Health Information Foundation, rural areas, largely because of the ingenuity and initiative of their citizens citi-zens are making it possible for doctors doc-tors to bring the benefits of good medical care to these communities. The availability of medical assistance as-sistance in rural areas, the Foundation Foun-dation points out, is at a level never before reached, because of the telephone, the automobile, improved im-proved highways and a vastly stepped-up hospital construction program. But in addition, many communities which never before had quick access to the best diagnostic diag-nostic equipment and skilled medical medi-cal assistance now enjoy these advantages, ad-vantages, because they actively sought them. "Some of the methods by which individual rural communities have achieved this level of medical efficiency," ef-ficiency," says Admiral W. H. P. Blandy, U.S.N. (Ret.), president of the Foundation, "are a tribute to American ingenuity and cooperation." coopera-tion." Admiral Blandy, who commanded the joint army-navy force which conducted the atomic bomb tests at Bikini, said that where the chief problem has been the lack of a doctor, doc-tor, citizens have banded together to create conditions which would attract at-tract a young physician. In other communities both a doctor and a clinic or hospital have been needed and in such cases it has been possible pos-sible to raise funds to erect community-owned facilities offering the necessary equipment for the practice prac-tice of medicine in its most modern form. TYPICAL OF SUCH endeavors by the admiral was the hospital built in Ennis, Mont., by the people of the community. In order to attract at-tract a doctor to head the new hospital, hos-pital, the town arranged for suitable suita-ble living quarters for the physician and his family, and raised the money for both the hospital building build-ing and equipment. In this particular case, before the building and equipping of the hospital hos-pital was an accomplished fact, an |