ENG-1959 — Page 190

PUBLIC HEALTH

157

The Urban Services Department has three main divisions dealing with health matters, the first with cleansing, the second with hygiene, and the third with hawkers, markets and slaughterhouses, parks, playgrounds and urban amenities. At the end of the year these divisions contained 282 administrative, professional and technical officers and 8,276 others. The Health Inspectorate con- sisted of 237 officers, of whom 215 had passed the Royal Society of Health examination for Public Inspectors.

District Health Work. Intense overcrowding presents many serious health problems, and measures designed to achieve the best possible standard of domestic and environmental sanitation are exceptionally important. For the purpose of inspection, the urban area is divided into a series of Health Units, each with approximately 600 domestic floors which include a number of licensed premises. Two or three of these units form a Health District, for which a District Health Inspector is responsible. These districts are in turn grouped appropriately to form Health Areas, each under the supervision of a Senior Health Inspector. This system permits easy variation of boundaries in conformity with the development of individual areas.

The greater proportion of the district inspectors' time is allotted to the regular inspection of some 150,000 domestic floors in the urban areas, an average of 1,600 floors per inspector; this is well in excess of the desirable maximum of 1,200 floors. The limit- ing factor is the capacity to recruit, train and absorb new officers. No probationary inspectors were recruited for training during the year but 26 newly qualified inspectors from the previous course became available and were posted for duty, bringing the number engaged on house inspection work to 94. During the latter part of the year, an experimental scheme for a new grade of Assistant Health Inspector was introduced. While undergoing a 2-year course of technical training to qualify as substantive Health Inspectors, these Assistant Health Inspectors will, at the same time, do routine jobs such as the detection and abatement of sanitary nuisances in houses, under the direct supervision of Health Inspectors. After passing the Royal Society of Health Examination for Public Health Inspectors, these officers will form a pool from which qualified and experienced Health Inspectors can be drawn when needed.