PUBLIC HEALTH DEPARTMENT

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 496, 1 May 1909, Page 14

PUBLIC HEALTH DEPARTMENT

\ Sir,—Permit me to ask whether, assuming the Government to be ameers and in earnest in its'.'decisiori to r retrench and reorganise the Civil' Seirice, it, am. equitably exempt ftorn its operations the Department of Public Health. In tha.'official Year .Book for 1907, the expenditure on that Department : is put down, at,'£33,000. .Inthe Year'Bbok. for 1908 it is £33,2,33. Taking into account that _ £145,999 i was spent last year upon hospitals, and;charitable institutions, . and £82,785 ■' upon' .mental hospitals,' tie oost 'of j the Public Health Department seems unaccountably largo.- How the monoy is spent ,is difficult to discover.; Bie people, who supply it; are left to oonjeoture. For example, .I have repeatedly asked as to the amount spent upon the vaccination establishment, including ..its'- medical and other ''officials;"., its' Wellington factory, its importations of "lymph," so-called, and is "chosen calves," and could gain no information either from the Year Book, or from mombers cf Parliament.:*. .such a question has never been'asked in either House or Assembly. When I have suggested from £7000 to £8000, tho estimate has not been considered too high. ; I submit that such a question ought not to 1 be necessary. The people, who stand to the Government in- the relation of shareholders to a joint stock or 00-operative concern, ought to know every detail of expenditure. But whatever the' amount, sinoe there re no smallpox in this colony, nor has been sinoe goodness 'knows when (tie reported Christohuroh case has always been questionable),', and since) if there were, vaccination would norther mitigate nor driest but actually spread it, as it recently did at Leicester, as admitted by the health officer, wnuld it not bo not only equitable but the wisest possible course to ' entirely abolish the State vaccination establishment, and devote its oost to some real and urgent necessity? We need not' go far to disoover such nooessity— one that sorely demands publio attention. Whilst the Year Books for 1907 and 1908 do not rooord a single case of smallpox, thay record that during 1906, out of 8339 deaths from all oauses in New Zealand, 623, or 7.47 per cent., were caused, by cancer, and that in 1907, out of a total of 10,066 deaths from all causes in New Zealand, there were 674 ; or 6.70 per cent., from cancer, a disease, as is too well known, incalculably moro ful and moTe. difficult to treat and enrethan smallpox. And. y.at for its arrest and treatment I'am-not aware that the Government has Bpent'.or done ■ anything* The first indication 1 of official awakening' to the necessity and obligation of- such is the recent announoement that a cancer department is to be added to the Otago Hospital. Why, may I ask, .should not such a department bo opened -in connection with tho hospital of each of the four central cities? .And why should not the;revenue for this, be-obtained ;by diverting and-appropriating the' annual "amount blindly wasted'and mis-spent upon, a State vaccination establishment? I trust that during the coming session this question will be pressed home. If it be thought by anyone that this a a medical and not a- lay question, let him consider that no sooner does the treatment of a disease beoomo _ State-established and ' en-, dowed than this establishment becomes a politioo-cocmomic question, which, being the right becomes tho duty. of ovory citizen to investigate, as beet he can. This obligation is confirmed when upon this, as upon bo many medical questions, "doctors differ" and leave the public to decide for themselves at the bar of common son-se and experience. Therefore, with your permission I will shortly supplement this letter by reference to what seem to me the probable causes, and the natural treatment of this deadly malady—, oanoor.—l am, etc., EDWIN COX. . „OaßibHdgo I :_ April 27-