British Mandate: A Survey of Palestine: Volume II - Page 626

CHAPTER XVI.

(xviii) To provide a disinfecting service.

Thirty-eight steam disinfecting machines are maintained in eighteen centres throughout the country. These include the port disinfecting stations of Ja ff a and Haifa. The 'number of articles or bundles disinfected in 1944 was 237 ,308.

(xix) To maintain registers of births and deaths and to control b11rials.

The Department of Health acts as the statutory registration authority for births and deaths. Registration is effected in District Health Offices. The Department is responsible for the issue of burial permits and for the control and supervision of burial grounds and also administers the Jaw prescribing the conditions under which the exhumation, transport and reinterment of corpses is permitted.

Before the establishment of a Department of Statistics, the Health Department prepared and compiled all population statistics for the years intervening between census enumerations. The Department still collects all vital statistics for analysis and publication by the Department of Statistics.

(xx) To investigate special endemic diseases and their prevalence and to adopt neasures for their prevention, i.e. hookworm,, malaria 1 venereal diseases, tuberculosis 1 trachoma and acute conjunctivitis, and schisiosomiasis,

Tho appointment of a Senior Medical Officer for endemic diseases made an extensive survey of tuberculosis in the country possible and a report on this subject was presented in 1935. Adequate provision for the control of the disease is still lacking. Measures for the treatment of venereal disease throughout the country have been in operation for a decade and progress has been made in the campaign against endemic syphilis in the Hebron sub-district.

The popularity of the free clinics in the large towns has exceeded expectation. The members seeking treatment are already too large to be adequately served by the staff available. Attendances since 1940 were as follows :-

1940 40,276

1941 46,270

1942 34,586

1943 39,640

1944 38,918

The survey of ankylostomiasis, together with the treatment of cases and the sanitation of villages, was interrupted by the disturbances and, subsequently, by the war.

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