Abstract
The network of present regional hygienic stations according to the Soviet model was set up in1952 followed by establishment of the Faculty of Medical Hygiene the present 3rd Faculty of Medicine at Charles University in Prague in 1953. This were progressive undertakings though fraught with inherent problems in any kinds of system designated for a rather different settings.
Nowadays what we still miss most is the expert critical analysis of successes, failures or potential errors of the hygienic service during the last six decades. The former Czechoslovakia was e.g. the first country worldwide that started anti-polio mass vaccination already in the beginning of the sixties, thus being an example for other countries.
Our physicians shared in the first and until today unique eradication action of another infectious disease – smallpox. From the relatively modest beginnings the hygienic stations became inflated to the “maxi” size in the late eighties, heavily criticized by the Western experts on the problems of preventive medicine in context with the public health system.
However, it is necessary to underline that these critics envy us the institutionalised structure of public health engaged in primary prevention, i.e. diseases prevention by influencing life style, living conditions, resistance of the human organism, etc., and warned against its total disruption to dismantle of this structure while trying to square up with the totalitarian legacy. The perspective focus of interest of our public health service remains the development of novel strategies for health risk analysis useful for disease prevention, a major public health priority in the 21st century.