INFECTIOUS DISEASES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 4 September 1907, Page 3

INFECTIOUS DISEASES.

LAXITY IN PREVENTION. Tli ■ recent disclosures and allegations concerning laxity in the administration of the Public Health Act in New Plymouth have not bed! unavailing, nor were the complaints premature by a single moment. It has been suspected for sumo time that there has been a screw iouse somewhere, but it lias been difficult to locate the screw which-should bear The responsibility. An officer t.f

the Public Health Department has been in town for a few days, and apparently one result of his enquiries is contained in the announcement on Monday, 2nd September, of a case of infectious disease which ought to have been notified to the local authority on August Bth last. At the Borough Council meeting last week Councillor Collis mentioned another breach of the law." Enquiries made singe then have disclosed the fact that a case of scarletina occurred in a building which was and is a place of public resort. After diagnosis the patient was sent to the Iv'cw Plymouth Hospital, and treated in the isolation ward JSo notification whatever was sent to the local health authority. ..i:-.i the Puulic Health Department and the medical practitioners are continually moving in the maticr of infection, and whilst they have provided this system of notifying infectious disease in order to gire the authorities a chance to disinfect the premises and thus prevent the spread of the disease, it is passing strange that some of the members of the medical profession themselves should fail to comply with the law. It may tie worth while to again mention the sale in a "public auction room of the bedding upon which a tuberculous patient had lain and died. And "0 notification of that ease was given so that the bedding could be so treated las to render it harmless to its future j users. There's a hopeless amount of overlapping, too, in the administration !of the health regulations. A case 'if ! scarletina occurred in the family of a person conducting a registered dairy. The borough sanitary inspector could d) just so much, ami no more, lest he trespassed on the territory of the local Stock Inspector, who controlled the dairy. (Supposing that the ease occurred whilst the Stock Inspector was away in tne backblocks on a calf-inoculating tour or doing other work, what would be Iho position then? |