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106
Report of the Medical Officer of Health.
Submitted to Council on 23rd November, 1921.
TUBERCULOSIS DISPENSARY SCHEME.
In consequence of the decision of the Council to take over the
Battersea Dispensary for the Prevention of Tuberculosis as from the
1st May last, it became necessary to prepare and submit a provisional
Dispensary Scheme for the approval of the Ministry of Health and the
London County Council. This scheme, as it is at present, has been
approved up to 31st December, 1921, and was practically that carried out
by agreement with the late Dispensary Committee pending the preparation
of a revised scheme.
REVISION OF DISPENSARY SCHEME.
A letter, dated 10th August last, has been received from the London
County Council, asking for a revised scheme to be submitted to them not
later than the 30th November next, together with full particulars of the
proposed arrangements and expenditure thereunder during the ensuing
financial year.
It will be necessary, therefore, to prepare a revised Tuberculosis
Dispensary Scheme for the Borough, but it will be borne in mind that
the interval since the absorption of the Battersea Dispensary into the Public
Health Department of the Council has been so recent, and the arrangements
as to staff recommended by the Health Committee have only just
been adopted by the Council, there has been consequently little time in
which to give more than a brief outline of the revised scheme which is now
asked for by the London County Council.
IMPROVEMENT OF DISPENSARY SERVICE IN LONDONDEFICIENCIES.
It will be remembered that a circular letter, dated 3rd December last,
was addressed by the Ministry of Health to Metropolitan Borough Councils,
in which it was pointed out that a recent survey of the existing arrangements
has been made in each Metropolitan Borough. This survey has
shown, amongst other matters, that the importance of arriving at a definite
diagnosis as quickly as possible has not in all cases been sufficiently appreciated,
and that the facilities provided at the appointed Consultation
Hospitals have not been fully utilised : that the provision of routine treatment,
as distinct from Consultation Work, has, at some dispensaries, been
developed to ah undesirable extent, particularly by the giving of medicine,
drugs, etc., to patients for prolonged periods: that such necessary functions
of the dispensaries as home visiting, the examination of “contacts” of
newly notified cases, and the “following up” of patients ceasing to attend
the dispensaries, have not been adequately developed in many instances :
and that generally the work of the Dispensary staffs have not been
sufficiently co-ordinated with the preventive work of the Public Health
Departments of the Borough Councils. Further, it is necessary that the
days and hours of opening, and the specific purposes of the Dispensary
services, should be arranged in accordance with definite objects, viz., the