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AFTER CARE:
After care facilities were used by over 700 tiberculosis and nontuberculosis
patients and covered a vide field from financial help,
provision of clothes etc. to boarding out of children, convalesence and holidays.
The pottery workshop has maintained its ork throughout the year but
because it has remained next door to the original Clinic in New ???ing's Road it is
now cut off from the parent Clinic following the latters transfer to the Western
Hospital. This separation enabled some gangs of local youths to break in on
several occasions and destroy much of the interior including the finished and
partly finished work. However, in spite of two energetic instructors and a
core of 5 enthusiastic patients attendances have sometimes fallen to three or four
per session. This is not surprising when it is remembered that during the
winter months most of these respiratory cripples are unable to come cut of doors
or may even be in Hospital. Weather conditions likewise prevent other
bronchitics from taking their place, in order to maintain attendance figures.
However, even in the winter period there may be long spells of relatively mild
weather, especially just before Christmas when the class can continue as usual.
These facts are not appreciated in certain quarters and the class has
remained under a threat of extinction for the last year.
NON-TUBERCULOSIS CHEST DISEASES:
Chronic respiratory disease in the form of chronic bronchitis killed 124
people in Fulham in 1958 compared with ll7 people in 1957. To these must be
added the 84 deaths from carcinoma of the bronchus. They were all partially
due to atmospheric pollution and the smoking of tobacco. These deaths were all
unnecessary. The bronchial cancer deaths during the last two years are as
follows:-
1957 1958
Male Female Male Female
61 7 70 14
More bronchial cancers are being diagnosed at the Wednesday afternoon
bronchoscopic clinic than used to be the case 10 years ago, but to date we have
not discovered a single non-smoker with cancer of the bronchus
BRONCHITIS:
Deaths in the country have remained about 30,000 per year but the deaths
from bronchial carcinoma have risen from 5,000 in 1939 to 20,000 in the current
year. If the present rate is allowed to continue it will exceed that for
bronchitis before the end of the next dicennium.
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