NOTIFICATION OF DISEASE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 314, 30 May 1911, Page 4

NOTIFICATION OF DISEASE.

AUSTRALIAN SUGGESTIONS. • A complete vindication of the compulsory notification of disease is a feature of the report of the Australian inter-State officers' conference on phthisis. "Notification," state the officers, "should not only tell ns whence the patient comes, but whither he goes, and determine where he ought to go. It protects the healthy from needless risk, and it has been found that the alleged hardships, objections, and risks to patients' social a»d pecuniary welfare have not been experienced in the States since the notification became compulsory." While recommendi?ig uniform legislation throughout the States for the notification of consumptives and the home care, education, and segregation of sufferers, the officers advise the care of consumptives' families with State funds, and .suggest that benefit and industrial insurance societies, with large sick assurance funds, might find it to their advantage to contribute to- a common fund for consumptives, or to co-operate with the State Governments for the maintenance of these families. Under the German State Insurance, funds are forthcoming for the maintenance of families during the sickness of the breadwinners. This system of insurance has stimulated health. Obviously a consumptive's wife should not he under the awful necessity of leaving the 'patient and her children to earn a precarious supply of bread. Tne system of relief has reduced the death-rate from consumption in Germany from 31 to 10 per 10,000 since 1888. Obviously we in advanced New Zealand have much to learn in these matters from the older countries.