Report of the Medical Officer of Health for the Colony on the public health ... / Cape of Good Hope.

  • Cape of Good Hope (South Africa). Department of Public Health.
Date:
[1906]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Medical Officer of Health for the Colony on the public health ... / Cape of Good Hope. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Tuberculosis. Of all the diseases attacking the Native and Coloured, Tuber¬ culosis is by far the most important and it is once more my duty to call attention to the ravages of the population it is causing, and to the extreme importance of the taking of public measures to restrain its further spread. It is now nearly fifteen years ago since I first directed attention in an annual Report on the Public Health to the danger threatened by this disease. At that time the warning received but little credence by the public. South Africa was con¬ sidered by most people as the one place for the cure of the consumptive coming from abroad, and surely, it was said, if it be a place to cure the disease, it can hardly be a place where it should spread. At that time there existed in the Colony no registration of births and deaths, there was no Public Health ‘Act, and, therefore, there was no Public Health service, and that the warning was well founded could not be demonstrated by definite statistics ; personal impres¬ sions and the experience of a few observers was all which we had to guide us. But after the coming into operation of compulsory registration of deaths in 1895 and later with the working of the Public Health Amendment Act, 1897, figures, which though incom¬ plete are irrefutable, have become available, and it is now no longer possible to doubt that this disease bids fair to decimate the native and coloured races, and especially the Coloured races, of South Africa, unless a check can be put on its progress. Happily the national danger threatening from this disease has now obtained public recognition and as a result effective and increasing attention is being given to measures for its arrest. Por several years past it has formed the subject of resolutions at the Mayoral Congresses of the Colony and at the last Pederated Mayoral Congress of South Africa. It has also received earnest consideration at the last two South African Medical Congresses. In the Cape Peninsula more particularly has public action been taken in the matter. Here, mainly on the initiative of Hr. Guillemard and with the powerful support of His Excellency the Governor and of many leading public men, an Association on the lines of the National Association for the Prevention of Consumption of Great Britain, was formed for the Cape Colony. Unfortunately, however, for the furtherance of its object, the Association was afterwards merged in an Association of much wider aim, namely, that of dealing with the whole scope of I ublic Health and Sanitation, thereby losing it simplicity and singleness of pur¬ pose and its national and uncontroversial character which consti¬ tuted the strength of the former Association. Also, largely on the initiative of the Cape Town Municipality, directed by Hr. Jasper Anderson, its able Medical Officer of Health, the Peninsula Munici¬ palities have met in special conferences for its discussion and have jointly approached the Government for assistance. But, in my opinion, these Bodies have been inclined to lay too much stress on the segregation of those affected for the control of the disease, rather than on the education of the people in the simple causes of its spread, and therefore in the means of its prevention, and on the improvement of the social and hygenic conditions under which the poorer and especially the Coloured classes of these towns live. Segregation of Consumptives. With the segregation and removal of the consumptive in view, these Municipalities have applied to the Government to, on the
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