CORRESPONDENCE.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2220, 18 June 1908, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE.

[Correspondence on public matters is welcomed at all times, but it must be distinctly understood that this journal is in no way associated with the opinions of its correspondents.]

LOCAL HEALTH MATTERS.

[To the Editor.] (Sir, —j notice that no reports are given in the Gisborne daily papers of the (presumably weekly) meetings of the local 'Board of Health, or otthe quarterly or half yearly reports of the local Health Officer. It appears to me, interested as I am in sanitation, that Gisborne is a town quite large enough, and with sanitary defects quite numerous enough, to provide the local Board of Health and their medical officer and his inspector or inspectors, with work well worth the doing, and which, when done, should surely interest the general public, as having been performed for the public good.

I presume that the Dominion has its “Public Health Act” and the Gisborne Council has its sanitary bylaws also, with a Board of Health to administer both the provisions of the Act and the Borough by-laws through their medical officer, and that house to house inspection is carried out at definite intervals, yet nve see no reports in the dailies of any of these public matters. Having acted as Medical Officer of Health to a colonial city of 30,000 population and every report made by me given verbation in the daily press, and a full account of all discussion and action on the part of the Board of Health and myself made public knowledge, leads me to remark this absence of information which the public have a right to demand in their own interests.

Monthly inspection by the Medical Officer of Health .for the Borough of all dairies and premises from which milk is sold, and weekly analysis of milk taken from the supply whilst in the cart 6 in the streets, is also, I presume, carried out in Gisborne as elsewhere; (since Gisborne is talked of as being so progressive a town), yet I never see any reports published in the press. 'Some evilly disposed people might hint that these reports are suppressed, but that, of course is quite impossible. ’ Even in the discussion of drainage possibilities for Gisffioruo I did not see any remarks of an official kind' from the local Medical Officer of Health (who ever ho may be) and these omissions seem to me, being a stranger here, to need explanation!— l am, etc., , “SANITARIAN.” Gisborne, June 10.