MAJORITY REPORT. MATERNITY AND CHILD WELFARE. 38. Maternity and Child Welfare schemes are conducted by County Councils and County Borough Councils and the Councils of certain of the larger County districts. Amongst the services for which the schemes provide are included the salaries and expenses of inspectors of midwives, health visitors and nurses engaged in maternity and child welfare work, the provision of midwives for necessitous women in confinement, and the expenses of Centres, i.e., institutions providing any or all of the following activities : medical supervision and advice for expectant and nursing mothers, and for children under five years of age, and medical treatment. 39. The expenditure on these services is met by a 50 per cent. grant from the Exchequer, the balance being found from the rates; and the grant is made on condition that the work of the agency is co-ordinated, as far as practicable, with the Public Health work of the Local Authority. The total Kxchequer grant paid to Local Authorities and Voluntary Agencies was in 1922-23 about £785,000. The total expenditure on the whole service amounted to about £1,530,000 in 1922-23. PoRT SANITATION 40. The primary object of the Port Sanitary Service 1s to protect this country and Biitish shipping from the introduction of grave infectious diseases which are endemic in certain parts of the world but are not ordinarily found in this country, for example, plague, cholera, yellow fever and in a lesser degree typhus fever and small-pox. Constant inspection and super- vision of shipping is carried out to this end, and in the course thereof, all cases of ordinary infections disease which are dis- covered are also dealt with. Efforts are likewise made to secure healthy conditions on board ship. The other main branch of port sanitary administration is the inspection of food entering the country in bulk. 41. The total annual expenditure of the Port Sanitary Autho- rities in England and Wales amounts to about £90,000, and an Exchequer grant is made amounting to 50 per cent. of the approved net expenditure. INFECTIOUS DISEASES. 42. The control and treatment of acute infectious diseases, such as scarlet fever, diphtheria and small-pox, is carried out in the main by the local sanitary authorities without assistance from Government funds. Broadly speaking, the functions of the sanitary authorities in respect of infectious disease are :— (1) To receive from medical practitioners in their district notification of cases of certain infectious diseases. Inquiries 54702 B