HEALTH DEPARTMENT

Southland Times, Issue 19347, 12 September 1924, Page 6

HEALTH DEPARTMENT

PREVENTION OF DISEASE. WORK OF PLUNKET SOCIEIT PRAISED. (Our Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, September 11. Interesting reflections on the health of the community during the past year, and the responsibilities of local authorities in that connection, are made in the annual report of the Department of Health, which was tabled in the House of Representatives yesterday. Unfortunately, says the report, the year under consideration was affected by the special demand for economy on public expenditure, and this necessitated a certain measure of Departmental reorganisation. Among other measures taken with a view to bringing about the economy so urgently required, was the decision to close the offices of the Department at Whangarei, Napier and Wanganui, the districts admmistered from those centres being placed respectively under the control of the Auckland and Wellington offices. It is obvious that the districts as now situated are too large to ensure efficient supervision, and it can only be hoped that in more prosperous times it will be possible again to establish offices outside the four chief centres of our population. At that time also, it may be possible to make Departmental positions more attractive to the medical profession than is possible under the existing circumstances.

The high rate of still-births and the mortality rate of infants under one month is also a matter for concern, but, on the other hand, the crude death rate of 9.03 places New Zealand in a more favourable light than does its infant mortality of 43.8 per thousand births. In this connection, all thanks are due to the Plunket Society for its untiring efforts to make this infantile mortality rate the lowest in the world. It is satisfactory to know that the death rate from tuberculosis, 6.21 per 10,000, still shows a tendency to decline. The gradual fall of this death rate is very satisfactory. The value of early sanatorium treatment cannot be too strongly urged, and in this respect it is gratifying to read the remarks of Dr H. Short, Medical Superintendent of the Pukeora Sanatorium. Dr Curtis, of the Otaki Sanatorium, on the other hand, does not report so favourably as to the admission of female patients. Influenza is a disease that recognises no nation or frontier, and reduces our quarantine systems to expensive absurdities. Our only line of defence at present appears to be to raise the standard of life by strict observation of the fundamental laws of health.