NO RESPONSIBILITY.

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 201, 25 August 1919, Page 4

NO RESPONSIBILITY.

According to the. retiring Minister of Health, the Health Department accepts no responsibility tor the outbreak of influenza in Samoa. The Department, he says, has never been associated with Samoa, and he is "not aware of a single

communication ever haying-been received by the Health Department in connection ivith the Islands, or even with ißarotonga nnd the Cook Island-. Samoa has been n Defence Department responsibility throughout, and the Cook Islands are under a. separate Minister." This is a grave statement. It is quite true that Samoa has been a responsibility of the Defence. Department, but surely during the last, five j-ears there were occasions on which it would have profited the Defence authorities to consult the. Health Department. Was this never done? In law Samoa was enemy territory held by a Britisii force, pending the peace settlement; but practically ie was part of NewZealand. .Seeing that it was administered from New' Zealand, and a regular steamer service was maintained between Apia and New Zealand, the wisdom of co-operation between the health authorities at both ends should have struck someone. No excuse of water-tight compartment responsibility can alter frhe very ugly fact that while we were responsible for the welfare of Samoa, a vessel was allowed to carry to Samoa a disease of a kind known to be da-ngerons to natives, and that although the Samoan administration could have been warned oi this beiore the vessel's arri-

vol, it was not warned. In the case of the .Cook Islands, the plea of divided responsibility has no weight at aIL These islands have been on quite a different footing to Samoa. They arc part of New Zealand, and, strictly speaking, a ship going from Auckland to the group is on a coastal voyage. Are we to understand that the Health Department has nothing whatever to do with the arrangements for safeguarding the health oi the people of these islands? Has it no voice in the framing of port and internal regulations there, or in the appointment of doctors employed by the State? If this is so, it is astonishing, and the sooner a change is made the better. Wo have made a very bad beginning as a '" mandatory" in Samoa, and we must not run any risk of a- repetition of this tragedy there or elsewhere.