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Gisborne Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2772, 30 March 1910, Page 4

A PUBLIC HEALTH COMMITTEE. The proposal that has been introduced by Dr. Collins in regard to the formation of a Public Health Committee for Gisborne town and. district is. cue that is worthy of very careful consideration. From the remarks made by the Hon. Geo. Fowlds reecntly it was evidently his intention that action of this kind should come as a corollary to the establishment of the new system cf governing hospital and charitable aid matters. It seems to us very desirable that a change should be made in the direction favored by the Minister. Taking, for instance, the cases of the two local bodies, the Cook County Council, and the Borough Council, we must recognise that neither are, properly speaking, fitted to carry out the duties of health authorities. Their members are elected primarily for -purposes very different from the guardianship of the public health. The opening up of the country by roads and bridges and the maintenance of the same is the chief function of the Cook County Council, and by the time members have wrestled with the joint problems of how to get more money from the Government and how to make their scanty funds satisfy the apparently boundless demands of settlers, they have little energy and no money left for the comparatively abstract question of public health. Similarly, the Borough Council has quite sufficient on its hands in dealing with streets, roads, and footpaths, buildings, drains, lighting and the hundred and one things that give scope for municipal energy without touching a department which is of sufficient importance to demand special knowledge, special attention and special funds. To put the matter briefly, public health has been merely a side line with these bodies, and that they have -attended to it as well as they have done is a tribute to their public spirit and particularly creditable to their officers, fetill it must he admitted that a great deal

more should be done, and tile work should be systematised'. Therefore, wo shall he glad to see the duties placed under the control of a body with special qualifications to administer them, and whose available time is not crowded out by other and quite foreign duties. One poftit in Dr. Collin’s proposals strikes us as being of a debatable nature. He' suggests that an independent Committee should be set up. 'Ve think it quite probable that the Hospital and Charitable Aid Board, as now constituted, is quite competent to control general matters of public health, and its duties are so closely allied that it might be a pity to separate the control of them. However, this is a phase of the subject which will 'merit the careful discussion which we trust will be given to it by the various bodies concerned.