British Mandate: A Survey of Palestine: Volume II - Page 631

CHAPTER XVI.
24. The revenue of the Department has varied from £P .8,000 in 1921-22 to approximately £P.60,000 in 1945-46.

25. The figures in paragraph 23 indicate the extent to which it has been possible for Government to allot funds for public health purposes from year to year. In themselves they do not perhaps explain the limitations, and it is necessary to take into account the many other activities of Government, including the requirements of security. Again, however, the steady increase of the annual expenditure will be noted, and it will be evident from the data furnished earlier in this section that, with the funds available, Government has successfully established and maintained the foundations of public health services.

26. The fact that these primary necessities have been adequately carried out has enabled the Jewish organisations to develop their medical services to a very great degree and to devote surplus funds to the initiation of ancillary health services such as the school medical and infant welfare services.

27. It is not possible in a mixed population to assess in definite terms the benefits which a State Service confers upon one group or another of the community. The sanitary isolation of one group differentiated by race or creed from another is impossible. Communicable disease does not recognise as a barrier to its spread any dividing line of race or religion and action taken directly to limit the spread of disease in one community is indirectly to the benefit of the other. The services of the Government Department are therefore not determined by racial or religious considerations but aim at the general improvement of conditions of health throughout the country and the protection of the public as a whole from the ravages of preventable disease. As in other countries, progress towards a better state of public health has been obtained by expending most effort where the need is greatest, that is, upon the more ignorant and backward elements of the social structure, since it is in these that the greatest potential dangers exist for the whole community. At the same time no service conducted by the Department is withheld from one group of the community or the other on the score of racial or religious distinction and all members of the public may utilise these services on an equal basis.

28. While the basic functions of the Department in the matter of sanitation and prevention of disease confer equal benefits on both communities, the Jews tend to utilise the more specialised branches of the service to a greater extent. On the other band, except in the matter of treatment of infectious diseases, the Department's hospital and medical services are not greatly used by Jews.

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