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REPORT OF THE CHIEF PUBLIC HEALTH INSPECTOR
I have pleasure in presenting my fourteenth Annual Report
Only one staff vacancy occurred on the inspectorial side
and this was quickly filled but the departure of Mrs. Haynes
and Mrs. Pool, members of the clerical staff for 6 and 8 years
respectively, caused difficulties from which the Department has
not yet fully recovered.
The Public Health Inspectors at present employed by the
Council are the best qualified and most widely experienced staff
the Department has had for many years. As the other qualityenthusiasm-
which has an incalculable influence on the standard
of an inspector's work, was not lacking, the years work can be
looked back on with satisfaction.
The Council responded to the need to improve old dwellings
by approving an all-out effort to persuade owners to carry out
improvements particularly the provision of bathrooms, wash hare
basins, hot water supplies, internal water closets and proper
food stores. The results of a survey of the older type houses
in the District are given elsewhere in this report. The passing
of the rousing Bill, which contains powers to declare Improvement
Areas and enforce the provision of standard amenities on a
systematic basis, is eagerly awaited.
Once again a great deal of attention has been paid to
health education, mainly in its simplest and most elementary
form i.e. explaining why hands should be washed after using the
toilet or before handling food, why milk is pasteurised, why
refrigeration helps to keep food in good condition and so on.
This kind of effort in schools is doubly rewarding as the
children pass on the message at home. An example of this
occurred when an outbreak of vomiting occurred in some of our
schools. Unusually stringent precautions to prevent the infection
spreading were put into operation. That the outbreak
Petered out may have been purely coincidental but what is
certain is that the lesson to wash hands was carried into
hundreds of homes in the District. We have heard of many
Parents who received gentle reminders, in the endearing way
which children have when given an opportunity of correcting
their elders, when they failed to wash their hands at the appropriate
times.
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