Communicable Diseases, Division of

The Division, created in 1906, absorbed the advisory and investigative functions of the Bureau of Epidemics and Infectious Diseases and the case-recording functions previously handled by the Bureau of Instruction and Publication. For most communicable disease, the Division handled case-reporting, analysis of case statistics, epidemiological investigations, and research on the use of new methods of disease control. Its staff also advised district and local health officers, monitored populations such as chronic typhoid carriers, and allocated federal and state funds for disease control trials and for special medical categories of personnel assistance. Diseases to be reported were specifed in the State Sanitary Code, formalized in L. 1913, Chap. 559 as the responsibility of the Public Health Council. The list grew from seven diseases in the 1910s to 38 diseases in the 1940s. It varied in content as new drug therapies eliminated some diseases or made them easier to contain, and new dangers were associated with others. From 1908 (Chap. 351) until 1913, tuberculosis control was the Division's main activity. In 1913, a separate Tuberculosis Division was formed to expand these programs. Programs for control and investigation of venereal diseases also were separate from other communciable disease control activities until 1952. In 1916, following the state's second major polio epidemic, the Division began orthopedic aftercare clinics. Following the 1931 polio epidemic, the Health Department moved the clinics into a new Division of Orthopedics with the New York State Reconstruction Home at West Haverstraw. IN 1935, a Bureau of Pneumonia Control was created to expand research into this frequently fatal disease. The Bureau began the Department's first sulfanomide drug trials in 1940. During the 1930s and 1940s, as sulfanomides and then antibiotics were developed and their applications understood, both the morbidity and mortality rates for most communicable diseases fell. The Division's monitoring and research functions remained important, but its service load decreased. The Division of Communicable Diseases was reorganized as the Bureau of Communicable Disease Control within a new Division of Medical Services in 1948.