United States Sanitary Commission

“ By a state enactment approved March 25, 1884, provision was made for a live-stock sanitary commission, which was charged with the duty of protecting 'the health of the domestic animals of the state from all contagious or infectious diseases of a malignant character,' an was empowered to establish, maintain, and enforce such quarantine, sanitary, and other regulations as it deemed necessary. ”

“ Wherever the disease has prevailed in this country or in Europe, it has been because of an utter neglect and disregard of what are now known as ordinary sanitary conveniences, and the report of the Country Life Commission, although many charges were made against the conditions of living in different parts of the country, was far from telling the whole story in the matter of the shortcomings in parts of the southern states. There is, therefore, every reason why the farmer and others living in the country should be urged to make themselves comfortable with all known modern sanitary appliances. ”

“ Without such protection, sanitary legislation cannot, in the words of the Royal Sanitary Commission, be ‘active and effective,’ because local officers are too dependent on their immediate employers to be thoroughly efficient. ”

“ It may be said with a feeling of conviction that the health control in the United States today is just exactly in accordance with the desires of the people. The people know that their State and municipal boards are being aided by the health activities of the national government rather than being encroached upon. ”

“ In an effort to reduce the risk of a similar attack in the United States, I am introducing legislation directing the Centers for Disease Control to develop a regulatory regime to control access to those infectious agents that could pose the greatest threat to public health if they fell into the wrong hands. ”

“ Municipal and State health organizations have accomplished much of late in the protection of the people against disease. But the humiliating confession must be made that in many measures of public sanitation in this country we are far behind the requirements of science. ”

“ It is true, the United States government bestows on public health and preventive medicine no where near the attention it finds necessary for the prevention of disease in stock and for agricultural improvement, but none the less there are certain well-organized and efficiently operated agencies which have for their function the improvement of public hygiene and sanitation, the eradication of preventable disease, and the study of causation and methods of control of diseases. ”

“ No recipe has ever been found for bringing up a healthy baby on unclean, infected milk; for avoiding tuberculosis among people who are [217] compelled to work with careless consumptives in unclean air; or for making a five-story leap as safe as a fire escape. Perfect habits of health on the part of an individual will not protect him against enervation or infection resulting from inefficient enforcement of sanitary codes by city, county, state, and national authorities. ”

“ Finally, there are the city bureaus, with powers vested, as a rule, in a medical man designated as "health officer," "agent," or "superintendent." What Massachusetts is to the State boards, New York City is to the local boards, but with even greater powers. Under the charter it has full power to make a sanitary code. Matters ranging from flat wheels on the Metropolitan Street Railway Company's antiquated cars, to soft coal smoke belched forth from factory chimneys, are subject to control by the New York City Department of Health. ”

“ None but medical men can prosecute such investigations with success, or suggest the proper remedy. If such a corps of sanitary inspectors were daily patrolling their districts, visiting from house to house, searching out sanitary evils, advising and aiding the people in the adoption of preventive measures, no epidemics of smallpox, typhus, scarlet fever, or cholera would ever gain more than a transient foothold. The sanitary inspector would truly become an officer of health and would be everywhere welcome. ”

“ This power can be exercised if the health officer believes that a case or source of a specified infectious disease exists or existed in the place or conveyance concerned. A health officer may also exercise the power in respect of a point of entry or a cross-boundary conveyance if he believes that it is in an insanitary condition. A health officer may also require an owner of a well to clean and disinfect it. ”

“ ASSISTANT SURGEON, UNITED STATES PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE
THE wide-spread ignorance of the various means employed by the federal government to promote the well-being of its citizens is nowhere better exemplified than in the common ignorance of the functions and important work of the Public Health Service. This ignorance is the more lamentable inasmuch as the Public Health Service is the sole national agency operating to combat and prevent epidemic diseases among human beings, and to improve public sanitation and hygiene, in the United States. ”

“ It is a well-known fact that the great majority of the cases of disease treated in our hospitals are induced by the bad sanitary condition of the homes of the poor, and to the direct violation, through ignorance, of the plainest hygienic laws; yet what direct steps are taken to correct this constantly-acting cause of sickness? The Health Department of New York City is expected to do little else than prevent epidemics of contagious and infectious diseases. The meagre appropriation prevents them from doing much more. ”

“ The CDC's innovative programs also address our national challenges of chronic disease, workplace and environmental hazards, injuries, birth defects, disabilities, and new infectious threats. In addition, the agency gathers and analyzes scientific data to better monitor public health, provide a solid foundation for decision-making, and detect risk factors. ”

“ Now, as critical as the task of health care reform is, Governor Sebelius will also oversee a department with wide-ranging responsibilities essential to the well-being of the American people. We rely on the Food and Drug Administration to ensure the safety of our nation's food and drug supply. We depend on the Center for Disease Control to make certain our nation is prepared for pandemic disease outbreak or bioterrorism attacks. We expect the National Institutes of Health to keep America at the forefront of medical research, and work toward a cure for cancer in our time. ”

“ This law also provides much-needed help to nearly 1,400 Community Health Centers that serve our most vulnerable populations, who are at the highest risk of infection and adverse outcomes from COVID–19. ”

“ Every well-informed medical man knows that we may have a sanitary police so vigilant, so efficient and so powerful, that it will not only preserve the public health, but prevent the spread of disease therefrom. We hold, therefore, that you are not only called upon to protect the people of the City of New York from contagious disease, but equally that you are bound to protect the people of the State from dissemination of pestilence by every legislative safeguard which sanitary science can suggest. ”

“ In determining the priority in which to conduct health assessments under this subsection, the Administrator of ATSDR, in consultation with the Administrator of EPA, shall give priority to those facilities at which there is documented evidence of the release of hazardous substances, at which the potential risk to human health appears highest, and for which in the judgment of the Administrator of ATSDR existing health assessment data are inadequate to assess the potential risk to human health as provided in subparagraph (F) . ”

“ If the Health Committee knew that it would have eventually to maintain the sick men whom it allowed to sink gradually into phthisis, as it has now practically to maintain persons who contract smallpox, it would look with a different eye upon the Medical Officer of Health's desire to "search out" every case of incipient phthisis whilst it is yet curable, to press upon the ignorant sufferer the best hygienic advice, and to do what is necessary in order to enable the insidious progress of the disease to be arrested. ”

“ Since the establishment of the Board of Health, in March, 1866, strenuous efforts have been made by that body to remedy the most glaring defects in the tenant-houses. Nothing could bear better evidence of the good results effected by the wise sanitary measures they have adopted than the saving in our mortality rates during the last year. It has been asserted that "our present code of health laws are better than those of any other city on this planet;" ”

“ The provincial people's governments and their competent departments of health of the provinces which host pathogenic microorganism laboratories shall strengthen medical resource allocation against infectious diseases so as to improve treatment capacity. ”

“ When a trend is identified, the enemy use of a biological agent is suspected. General protective measures are the same as for any infectious disease; specific protective measures are used once the vector or method of transmission has been identified. Designating a single hospital to care for these patients (from a patient care or disease transmission standpoint) may not be necessary. However, if the agent is communicable, consolidating them all at one facility maximizes the use of limited assets and aids in limiting the spread of the disease. ”

“ State health machinery should be of two kinds,—fact-gathering and executive supervision through inspection. The greatest service of state boards of health is to educate localities as to their own needs, using the experience of all communities to teach each community in how far its health administration menaces itself and its neighbors. In addition to registration of contagious diseases, facts as to deaths and births should be registered. ”

“ The City Inspector’s department, which alone has the machinery for sanitary inspection and surveillance, is a gigantic imposture. Of its forty-four health wardens, whose duty it should be to make house-to-house inspections, searching out the cause The City Inspector’s
Department of disease, and using every known agency for the control and suppression of epidemics, many are liquor dealers, and all are grossly ignorant. Not one has any knowledge of medical subjects, nor dare they freely visit such diseases as smallpox, typhus, or cholera. ”

“ Initial triage, EMT, and decontamination are accomplished on the "dirty" side of the hot line. Life-sustaining care is rendered, as required, without regard to contamination. Normally, the senior health care sergeant performs initial triage and EMT at the BAS. Secondary triage, ATM, and patient disposition are accomplished on the clean side of the hot line. When treatment must be provided in a contaminated environment outside the CPS, the level of care may be greatly reduced because medical personnel and patients are in MOPP Level 3 or 4. However, lifesaving procedures must be accomplished. ”

“ The state has the right to require such information from the parent or householder, and it has also the right to require the physician to notify the parent or householder as soon as he recognizes the existence of such infectious disease. It is extremely desirable that the health authorities of a city should receive promptly, and direct from physicians, notification of the occurrence of such diseases, and there will usually be no difficulty in obtaining this if the health officer has tact and discretion and the city is prepared to do its duty. ”

“ It considered a vigorous campaign of education the most necessary step for the control of these diseases. It recommended, however, that all cases encountered in dispensaries, hospitals, juvenile and municipal courts, penal institutions, maternity hospitals, rescue homes, and all places of detention, should be officially reported. The commission also urged that the city contribute to the support of free dispensaries for the treatment of these diseases and that the Department of Health make tests for the diagnosis of these diseases without charge. ”

“ When a state or municipality has so far advanced in civilization as to consider it desirable to take measures to protect the public health by preventing individuals from polluting the air or water liable to be used by [p. 208] their neighbors, etc., the services of the medical profession are always called upon. The foundation of public hygiene is information as to the occurrence of certain forms of disease, the cause of which can be referred with more or less precision to a certain limited locality. ”

“ Want of knowledge along lines of modern sanitary advancement is to a very large extent due to the inertness of legislatures in enacting laws to meet the modern sanitary needs. The passing and enforcing of such laws would surely force our ignorance on this subject out of us and place us on a higher hygienic plane, such as has been established by the excellent enactments in a few of our States. ”

“ Public or governmental hygiene has been chiefly concerned with pure air and pure food, and with organisms producing epidemic diseases. Boards of health are a recent invention, and in this country they have as yet been only imperfectly developed. They can never become the power they should be until, first, public opinion better realizes their usefulness and the fact that their cost to the taxpayer is saved many times over by the prevention of death and disease; second, more and better health legislation is enacted—national, state, and municipal ”