View report page

245
Public Health Department,
Municipal Buildings,
Battersea, S.W.
15th December, 1908.
To the Health Committee.
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen,—
In accordance with the instructions of the Committee, I beg
to submit my report on the preventive measures adopted by the
Sanitary Authorities of the various Metropolitan Boroughs and
of the great towns of England and Wales; of Edinburgh and
Glasgow, in Scotland; and Dublin, Belfast and Cork, in Ireland,
for dealing with Tuberculosis.
It will be of interest to the Committee, in the first place, to
describe the preventive measures which are at present carried out
under their supervision in the Borough of Battersea, so that a
comparison between these measures and those carried out elsewhere
may be drawn.
Owing to there being no system of either voluntary or compulsory
notification in force in the Borough, the work of the Health
Department in this direction has been considerably restricted, and
in consequence a very small proportion only of the cases are notified
to us either by philanthropic bodies or the Council's own Lady
Inspectors, who in the course of their ordinary duties get to know
of occasional cases. In the majority of instances cases only come
to our knowledge on the death of the patient, the District Registrars,
who are paid a small fee for the purpose, sending to the
Medical Officer of Health a postcard giving the name and address
of the deceased. The disadvantage of this system will be obvious,
when it is remembered that the patient may have died in the
Infirmary to which he had been removed weeks, or perhaps months,
previously. It is not possible to do much in the direction of disinfection
or other preventive measures under such circumstances
as these, as to be effective all such measures depend on the