[Environment. Preventive health action in the creation of the environment]

The present quantitative importance of prevention is in Switzerland extremely low in comparison to the health budget of the national community. It has taken in recent years increasing place however in speeches and talks as well as in medical thinking. Prevention presently tends to be seen as a medical specialty among others and perhaps prefigures a new form of medicine, the object of which would be the societal body more than the body of the sick individual. In this perspective (would that be good?), a new type of physician-informatician-statistician might be trained, with the mission to manage and supervise the health status of the population. Preventive health action through the environment at large could fulfill an important role in the foreseeable developments. New health "morals" are currently emerging, which are bringing together numerous adepts. This might mean that the time of a "health society" (or health-determined society) is not far.