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19
COST AND WORK OF THE SANITARY
DEPARTMENT.
A table has lately been prepared by the Town Clerk
giving the cost of Municipal work in certain towns of about
the same population as Kingston. Many of the towns are
hardly comparable with Kingston except for number of population,
but these towns have been given and on behalf of my
department I wish to point out that the bald figures given show
only a part of the money spent on sanitary work special to
my department and give no clue to the measure of success
obtained in comparison to the expenditure. Besides the
M.O.H. and S.I. a certain number of officials are, elsewhere,
on the staff of isolation hospitals and the cost of isolating infectious
disease whether in hospital or the home must be
considered in making comparisons between places.
The measure of success achieved must be of greater
moment in considering the cost of a health department than
the actual amount paid in salaries, and if the results, whether
measured by lowness of infantile mortality, or general death
rate, or by comparative freedom from infectious diseases, is
good, I think the department must be considered a success,
provided always that the success has not been obtained by an
unreasonable expenditure. That there is not excessive cost in
Kingston is shown by the fact that taking the whole cost this
town is almost the lowest on the list in charges per head of
population, and taking the salaries only, it is half way down the
list, whereas in results on the criteria instanced we are nearly
at the top in each case.
In working out the results the latest population figures
have been taken in each case for the same period of time from
the Registrar General's reports. The cost of isolation has
been obtained from the officials of the towns. Some of the
towns did not give figures, but in those cases there is no
reason to believe that the expenditure was lower than
elsewhere.