NOTIFICATION OF DISEASE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10248, 26 May 1911, Page 4

NOTIFICATION OF DISEASE.

A complete vindication of the compulsory notification of disease is, says the Melbourne Age, a feature of the report of the inter-State health officers' conference on phthisis. "Notification," state the officers, "siliould not only tell us whence the patient comes, but whither he goes, and determine where he ought to.igo. It (protects the healthy from needless risk, and it has been found that the alleged hardsMps, objections, and risks to patients' social and pecuniary welfare have not been experienced in the States since the notification became compulsory." Wihilif recommending uniform legislaion throughout the States for the notification of' consumptives and the home care, t education and-(Segrega-tion 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-op-erate 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 eonsurnpr tive's-wife-should not'.he'under the awful necessity of leaving the patient and her children to earn a precarious supply of bread. The system of relief has reduced the deathrate from consumption in Germany from 31 to 19 per 10,000 since 1886. ■ . ■ *