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4
Council and
Committee
Justified.
would perhaps be advisable for the information of the
Council, as well as the public, to touch upon a few of
the more important items which, if they stood alone,
instead of being parts of a larger whole would, I
submit, go very far indeed to justify the active policy
of + he Council and its Committee, and also the efforts
of the Sanitary Staff in giving effect to such policy.
There is no necessity for any apologetic attitude to be
taken in respect of the forward policy of this Authority,
either by Members of the Committee or its Staff.
Justification can easily be shown by the results obtained,
and which results do not permit any wrong
conclusion, and that apart from statutory duties a
complete and active Sanitary Department is a good
investment for the Borough.
Taking only a few of the most important items
we find: —
1. The Staff has dealt with 1,480 cases of infectious
disease, and has had removed to Hospital no less than 1,308
patients, a large number of whom were children, and which
children could not possibly have obtained the necessary nursing
and attention in the average homes of the Borough.
2. The supervision of the food-stuffs deposited and
exposed for sale in the shops and markets is in every way
satisfactory, as is shown by the fact that the average number
of adulterated samples of food has been reduced over a period
of years from 31% to 8%. In a specially given time the figures
worked out even better and were in fact reduced from 31% to
6½%. Further it should be mentioned that under the old regime
about 100 samples of food were taken annually ; last year no
less than 617 such samples were taken and analysed, and legal
proceedings taken where necessary, i.e. in 52 cases.