Sous-fonds consists of records created and/or maintained by the Health Protection Branch. The sous-fonds includes records of the Office of the Assistant Deputy Minister, the Laboratory Centre for Disease Control, the Bureau of Chemical Safety, the Drugs Directorate, the Food and Drug Directorate, Environmental Health Directorate, the Field Operations Directorate, and the Western Regional Office.
Canada. Health Protection Branch : The mandate of the Health Protection Branch (HPB) of the former Department of National Health and Welfare (NHW) was to protect Canadians against health risks arising from environmental or industrial hazards, communicable diseases, unsafe food, licit and illicit drugs, medical devices and other consumer products. Created as a result of a major departmental re-structuring in January 1972, HPB's history begins with the federal government's first attempts in 1875 to impose controls on both food and drugs available to Canadians through the enactment of An Act to Impose Licence Duties on Compounders of Spirits; ... and to Prevent Adulteration of Food, Drink, and Drugs. In 1909, passage of the Proprietary or Patent Medicine Act required drug manufacturers to register all secret formula non-pharmacopoeial medicines intended for internal use, and to note their presence on drug labels and wrappers. Between 1913 and 1915, regional laboratories under the Department of Inland Revenue were set up in Halifax, Winnipeg and Vancouver to assist in the examination of food purity; in 1918, the function was transferred to the Department of Trade and Commerce's Food and Drug Laboratory. After 1919, the Department of Health (which included a Laboratory of Hygiene) carried out the provisions of the new Food and Drugs Act (1920) by investigating the purity of food and drugs, including medicated feed and drugs given to animals later consumed by humans. It was also responsible for the surveillance and control of opium and narcotic drugs (following the enactment of the Opium and Narcotic Drug Act of 1908), proprietary or patent medicines, and venereal diseases. The Narcotics Control Division was created in 1924 with the responsibility to oversee the legal control of all narcotic drugs in Canada and prevent illegal importation. In 1927, regulatory requirements for the manufacture of licensed drugs and the inspection of plants were implemented, and manufacturers were required to obtain licenses to prepare products of animal origins, serums, viruses, toxins and vaccines. Further monitoring and inspection activities were introduced in the following years with the establishment of the Division of Epidemiology in 1937, the Public Health Engineering Division (PHED) in 1938, and the Venereal Disease Control Division (VDCD) by Order-in-Council P.C. 132/1857 of 15 June 1943. Following the creation of NHW in 1944, its new Health Branch underwent a further subdivision in 1949, creating four directorates: Health Services (which encompassed Narcotic Control, Epidemiology, PHED and VDCD), Health Insurance Studies, Food and Drugs (FDD), and Indian Health Services. Beginning in September 1951, following changes to the regulations accompanying the Food and Drugs Act, drug manufacturers were required to submit data regarding the safety of new drugs for review and approval before a drug could be marketed in Canada. Further changes to the Directorate's functions resulted from the revised Food and Drug Act of 1954, and in 1966, the FDD's inspection/control activities were increased as the Narcotic Control Division was formally incorporated into the Directorate. In the departmental re-structuring of January 1972, the Food and Drugs Directorate, the Environmental Health Directorate, the Canadian Communicable Disease Centre, and the Epidemiology and Nutrition Divisions from the Health Services Branch were combined to create the Health Protection Branch. The new branch was composed of six organizational units: Foods, Drugs, Environmental Health, Laboratory Centre for Disease Control, Field Operations, and Administration Services. The Environmental Health Directorate, responsible for the research on the health effects of environmental factors, also provided surveillance and control services on a variety of occupational hazards such as radiation, pesticides, and toxic chemicals. The Laboratory Centre for Disease Control continued to study communicable diseases, assess the safety/effectiveness of medical devices and provide licensing and quality control for biological drugs and the manufacturers of antibiotics. The new Field Operations Directorate became responsible for all surveillance and corrective action (compliance), data gathering and analysis, and educational services for the whole branch, excluding such activities for the Bureau of Dangerous Drugs (the former Narcotic Control Division). The Branch maintained its basic structure from its creation in 1972 to its dissolution in 2000. Interim changes included: the removal of the Federal Centre for AIDS from the Laboratory Centre for Disease Control in July 1987 (the centre was made a separate directorate in order to address the increasing requirement for government involvement in controlling the spread of AIDS in Canada); the transfer of the Product Safety Bureau from the former Department of Consumer and Corporate Affairs to HPB in 1994; and the creation of the Pest Management Regulatory Agency in 1995 out of elements from four different departments, including elements from the Health Protection Branch. The Health Protection Branch itself was dissolved effective July 2000, as part of a major realignment of Health Canada's organization. Most activities previously conducted by the Health Protection Branch were continued under the ambit of one of two new branches: Environmental & Product Safety; and Health Products & Food. Other activities were transferred to yet other new branches; for instance the former Health Protection Branch's Laboratory Centre for Disease Control and Laboratory Centre for Enteric and Zoonotic Diseases (formerly the Health of Animals Laboratory) became part of the Population & Public Health Branch.
