Section 22-3-2

County boards of health - Duties generally.

It shall be the duty of the county boards of health in their respective counties and subject to the supervision and control of the State Board of Health:

(1) To supervise the enforcement of the health laws of the state, including all ordinances or rules and regulations of municipalities or of county boards of health or of the State Board of Health, and to supervise the enforcement of the law for the collection of vital and mortuary statistics and to adopt and promulgate, if necessary, rules and regulations for administering the health laws of the state and the rules and regulations of the State Board of Health, which rules and regulations of the county boards of health shall have the force and effect of law and shall be executed and enforced by the same bodies, officials, agents and employees as in the case of health laws;

(2) To investigate, through county health officers or quarantine officers, cases or outbreaks of any of the diseases enumerated or referred to in Section 22-11-1 and to enforce such measures for the prevention or extermination of said diseases as are authorized by law;

(3) To investigate, through county health officers or quarantine officers, all nuisances to public health and, through said officers, to take proper steps for the abatement of such nuisances;

(4) To exercise, through county health officers or quarantine officers, special supervision over the sanitary conditions of schools, hospitals, asylums, jails, theatres, opera houses, courthouses, churches, public halls, prisons, markets, dairies, milk depots, slaughter pens or houses, railroad depots, railroad cars, dining cars, street railroad cars, lines of railroads and street railroads (including the territory contiguous to said lines), airports, industrial and manufacturing establishments, offices, stores, banks, club houses, hotels, rooming houses, residences and the sources of supply, tanks, reservoirs, pumping stations and avenues of conveyance of drinking water and other institutions and places of like character and, whenever insanitary conditions are found, to use all legal means to have the same abated;

(5) To elect a county health officer, subject to the approval of the State Committee of Public Health, who shall devote all of his time to the duties of his office and to fix his term of office at not less than three years in such counties of the state as shall, through their proper authorities, make appropriations for full-time public health service. No county health officer elect shall assume office until his election shall have been approved by the State Committee of Public Health, and if such committee refuses to approve his election, another county health officer shall be forthwith elected. The jurisdiction of such officer shall extend to all parts of the county, including all incorporated municipalities; and should the health officer so elected neglect or fail faithfully to perform any of the duties which are lawfully prescribed for him or if he fails or refuses to observe or conform to the rules, regulations or policies of the State Board of Health, the state health officer shall remove said county health officer from office. When any county health officer shall be so removed, he shall have the right to appeal to the State Committee of Public Health, and when such appeal has been taken, said committee shall investigate fully the causes for which he was removed from office. If six members of said committee vote to affirm the action of said state health officer, then his action shall be affirmed; otherwise, it shall be reversed; and

(6) Whenever two or more counties, acting through their respective county commissions, shall agree to appropriate proportionately from the funds of their respective counties a sufficient sum to provide a district health department, then the county boards of health of these respective counties shall meet in joint session and elect a full-time health officer and fix his term of office at not less than three years. The full-time health officer shall devote all of his time to the duties of his office in the district for which he is elected. No full-time health officer elected under the authority of this subdivision shall assume office until his election shall have been approved by the State Committee of Public Health, and if such committee refuses to approve his election, another district health officer shall forthwith be elected. The jurisdiction of such officer shall extend to all parts of each county in the district, including all incorporated municipalities in the several counties composing such district, and he shall be subject to removal as provided in subdivision (5) of this section. The salary of district health officers shall be fixed in the same manner as those of county health officers. Wherever the term "county health officer" occurs in this chapter, it shall be construed as applying likewise to district health officers.

(Code 1907, §703; Acts 1919, No. 658, p. 909; Code 1923, §1052; Acts 1935, No. 444, p. 926; Code 1940, T. 22, §8.)