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:
- [1908]
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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![REPORT on the Public Health of the Colony for the Calendar Year 1908, together with Summaries of Reports of District Surgeons and Local Authorities for the same period. grrscntdi to botl] louses ot §avliamnit t)i> Commauft of its feeUoug tljc fiobnnor 1909. Report of the Medical Officer of Health for the Colony. Department of Public Health, To the Honourable Pape Town, October, 1909. The Colonial Secretary. gIRi_T have the honour to present the Vital Statistics relating to the years 1907 and 190^ together with the reports of District Surgeons and Local Authorities regarding the state of the Public Health and the sanitary condition of their respective districts during the last-mentioned year. In doing so, T do not propose to attempt any detailed report on the Public Health or the work of the Department during the year, for the twofold reason that, in the absence of any reliable knowledge of the extent of the population it is impossible at present to make any satisfactory use of these statistics, and, as my next report will be the last Annual Health Report for this Colony before the taking place of South African Union, with the fundamental changes it will entail, it would seem advisable to reserve for that occasion a more comprehensive statement of the work of the Department. Although there has been some unavoidable delay in presenting the present report, owing to pressure of work consequent partly upon the transfer - to the Department of certain important branches of administration and partly upon the reorganisation of the work that this involved, yet this is counterbalanced by the fact that I am able now, for the first time, to present the Vital Statistics obtainable by the registration of Births and Deaths for the actual year of my report, whereas formerly I could only do so for the year preceding it. Accordingly, in the Annexures will be found statistics for the two years 1907 and 1908. This step in advance has been rendered possible by the transfer of the whole of the work connected with the registration of Births, Deaths and Marriages to the one Administration, so that we have not only been able to effect thereby a very considerable saving in expenditure, but have found it possible to complete more rapidly the work of tabulation and the preparation of the statistics in a form for publication. Transfer of Work to the Health Department. Regarding this additional work transferred to the Department, it will be re¬ membered that, from the beginning of the year 1907, the Office of the Medical Officer of Health for the Colony was constituted a separate Department of Public Health, with the Medical Officer of Health for the Colony as its official head, dealing with the administration of nearly all matters relating to Public Health and sanita¬ tion. A separate wing of the Colonial Secretary s Office, however, still con¬ tinued as the “ Local Government and Hospitals Branch,” dealing with all other affairs relating to Local Government and with Hospitals, Asylums and medical matters not directly connected with sanitation or the Public Health. But eighteen months later, that is from the 1st of July, 1908, it was decided by the Govern¬ ment to abolish this wing altogether and to transfer the whole of the Local Government work to the Department of Public Health, together with a few- special subjects of a purely medical kind; all matters, however, relating to State-aided Hospitals, Asylums—Leper, Lunatic and Chronic Sick—and the care of Sick Paupers, and the like, were retained directly under the Under Colonial Secretary, into whose head Office their administration was withdrawn. By this arrangement a large financial saving was effected in this Department, and what](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b31482041_0005.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
