Heilbrigðisskýrslur - 01.12.1938, Page 165

I. Administration and Organisation of Public Health
Affairs.
The supreme administration of public health affairs in Iceland is
not in the hands of any special ministry of public health but com-
mitted to the charge of the Ministry of Justice and Ecclesiastical Af-
fairs. The Minister of Public Health may be, as is the case at pre-
sent, the Minister of Social Affairs, which indeed seems most appro-
priate, but may also be any of the other four ministers, as occasion
demands. Matters concerning the public health are regulated by a variety
of acts, royal decrees and government regulations.
The executive officer of public health for the whole of the country
and expert adviser and chief assistant of the Government in all matters
concerning public health is a medically trained official, the Director of
l'uhlic Health, who is a permanent official and does not change with
governments. Furthermore, specialists are appointed to executive or
advisory posts concerning some important l)ranches of the public health
affairs. In this connection we may specially mention the medical
officer who superintends the measures for prevention of tuberculosis,
the chief medical officer of the Social Insurance Institution and the
director of the State Food Control.
The representatives and executives of the public health authorities
are 49 district medical officers who are in charge of an equal number
of medical districts.1) They are in charge of the execution of matters
affecting the public health each in his own district according to the
provisions of the law, either alone or in co-operation with the chiefs
of police concerned, but in addition to this committees and special
officers are appointed to carry out the said provisions or assist in
various matters. In this connection special mention must be made of
the public health boards of municipalities and rural communities, who
superintend the hygienic conditions each in their own districts and
quarantine boards in all lcgal trading stations who superintend quaran-
tine measures with regard to ships arriving from abroad; further there
are sanitary inspectors in most towns who carry out the decisions
of the public health boards and then special sanitary workers who
take care of disinfection, vaccination, and treatment of dogs which is
a preventative measure against tape-worms in accordance with the
provisions of the Hydatids Act, etc.
1) At tlie time of writing (May, 1940) an Act has been passed to make one
niore district in the neighbourhood of Reykjavík, which Act will come into force
at the beginning of next year.
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