comment from Sunday Herald, 10 June 2012
Prevention, they say, is better than cure. That is the key lesson that should be learnt from the tragic outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease in Edinburgh last week.
It’s all very well for the regulatory authorities to be crawling over suspected culprits like a rash now - but where were they beforehand? Much sorrow and pain would have been saved if health inspectors had stopped the deadly bacteria from spreading over a large part of the city in the first place.
But, as we reveal today, the UK Health and Safety Executive and Scottish local authority environmental health departments have suffered serious cutbacks in recent years, losing up to a fifth of their staff. Of course no-one can say for sure that this caused the Edinburgh outbreak.
But we can be pretty sure that fewer inspectors and fewer inspections make it more likely that there will be further outbreaks like this in the future. If companies think they can get away with cutting corners to save money in these straightened times, they will – and the consequences could be more unnecessary deaths and illness.
The trouble is that the sort of intelligent, educative and proactive inspection regimes that are best placed to deter slack behaviour are among the easiest to cut. This is especially so when the agenda being set in London – and sometimes followed in Edinburgh – is for “light touch” regulation to help businesses.
If the toll from this outbreak – now up to 80 cases including one death – shows anything, it’s that light touch regulation can be very risky. As the trade union for professionals, Prospect, argued, we need more inspections and inspectors, not less.
This does not mean that companies have to be tied up with reams of red tape. But it does mean that they should think twice about trying to save money by cutting back on keeping their cooling towers clean, or checking their emissions.
The dangers of legionella bacteria are well known, and the measures necessary to prevent them multiplying and escaping from cooling towers or air conditioning systems are not rocket science.
Crucially, the regulators must be prepared to get tough and go to court when necessary. There’s nothing like a high-prolife prosecution to send a clear message to would-be defaulters.
So in Edinburgh it would be wrong if no organisation ended up being charged because the source of the outbreak couldn’t be identified with certainty. It would be like getting away with murder.
The point was made well last week by the renowned bacteriologist, Hugh Pennington. "This is not an act of God,” he said. “This is a failure of maintenance by someone and simply should not happen.”
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