BACTERIOLOGY.

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 142, 17 June 1922, Page 13

BACTERIOLOGY.

-PROPOSED AMALGAMATION OP DEPARTMENTS. Cast month Councillor Davis asked at. a meeting of the City Council if the council's attention had been drawn to tlie proposal of the Minister of Public Health to amalgamate the local bacteriological branch of the Public Wealth Department with the Auckland Hospital Board's bacteriological department; also if the council was satisfied that the extensive scientific investigations at present being carried out by the local branch of the Public Health Department in the interest. of the public health were uot going to be seriously interfered \\ ith by the proposed amalgamation. The chief sanitary inspector reported that as the object of the Health Department and the Auckland [Hospital Board in combining their bacteriological stall's as soon as a suitable building could lie obtained, was economy and increased efficiency, and', not so far as he was aware with any intention of curtailing the important work now being carried ou, there was no likelihood that public health interests would be interfered with by the proposed amalgamation.

Councillor Savage said that the council should be sure that a new building was going to be erected before endorsing the proposal. Unless they got a new building, someone would have to be sacrificed for the bacteriological branch of the Public Health Department could not be accommodated at the hospital. He was very much taken with the excellent work done by this section, and science should not be strangled for politics. It was I decided to ask the Minister of Public Health as to the Department's intentions concerning accommodation.