LEAGUE OF NATIONS

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 October 1928, Page 8

LEAGUE OF NATIONS

PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICES. It has been said that the League of Nations is a European organisation, but this is far from being true as regards its technical activities and particularly , the work of its health organisation. New evidence of the breadth of its field of interest and activity is given in the appearance of the handbook “Public Health Services in New Zealand”, which was recently issued by the Health Organisation of the League of Nations, as one of a series of studies for the use of health administrations.

This survey begins by describing in brief but adequate terms the physical and social conditions which the Health Organisation of New Zealand has been designed to serve. The history of the Health Acts for New Zealand, from the simple measure of 1872, significent rather for its recognition of the place of sanitation in community organisation than for its administrative provisions, to the Health Act of 1920, which defined the present complete organisation of the New Zealand State Department of Health. It is the history not only of-the growing complexity of a new country, but of the efforts of its people to meet each fresh need din health organisation. A mere mention of the administrative divisions of the Department of Health — (Public Hygiene and Sanitary organisation, Water Supplies, Buildings, Infectious and Contagious Diseases, Quarantine, Control of Food and Drugs), Hospitals, Nursing School Hygiene, Dental Hygiene, Maori Hygiene and Maternal and Infant Welfare —is sufficient to indicate the scope of its functions, and/ incidentally, the theory of centralisation of public services which underlies its organisation.

Part II of the Survey is devoted 1,0 a’study of the methods employed in tho collection and compilation of vital statistics. The efforts of statisticians and public health officers to interchange information with regard to the incidence and prevention of diseases has revealed the fact that serious lack of standardisation in statistical method may render the available data incapable of comparison, and so practically useless. The Health Organisar tion of the League found that to carry out its programme of a world-wide service of epidemiological intelligence ■it must publish information on the official statistics of the various countries involved. Part II of- this volume on New Zealand' describes clearly the procedure employed in the collection and publication of statistics on population, births, deaths, and notifiable diseases, - including not only methods of registration but also the actual current public reports. , The volume is usefully, concluded with a bibliography of the official publications of the Census and Statistics Offices and the Department of Health of New Zealand.