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6
and the environmental health services. The Area Health Authority services
will be under the control of a "Community Physician", possibly recruited
from the hospital services and working in unspecified headquarters. If
local proposals eventuate, it appears that the local authority personal and
school health services will have an infinitesimal percentage of the annual
budget. In the projected area there will be 34 hospitals - 7 of them
teaching schools and 21 subsidiary teaching schools - and 500 general
practitioners. The current net expenditure on personal and school health
of roughly £750,000 per annum will be insignificant in comparison with the
proportion of the budget for the practitioner services (which will be in
the neighbourhood of £6,250,000), and that for the 34 hospitals, among
which one teaching hospital alone has a future estimated revenue cost of
£6,500,000. My views on these proposals are contained in the memorandum
which I submitted to the Council Working Party on the Green Paper and the
Local Authority Social Services Bill on 2nd April, 1970. They may be
summarised by saying that the Green Paper does not deal with the real
defects in the National Health Service and the measures it suggests would
not effect a remedy. The expensive administrative chaos which would
result from these undemocratic and revolutionary proposals would be
disruptive to the organisation and discouraging to the recruitment and
retention of local authority staff. It should be possible by a continuation
of the evolution at present proceeding in the Service to solve
all its defects, always providing that the necessary money were forthcoming.
It has been a privilege and honour to work for
twenty-one years in two Boroughs, now conjoined, which in the present
century have contributed so much to the health of the nation with so
many pioneering ventures.
There have been such institutions as the Violet
Melchett Centre, Princess Louise Hospital, the Archer Street Infant
Welfare Centre, and Queen Elizabeth College. The last, originally
established in Kensington Square in 1908 as the Home Science Department
of the King's College for Women, was founded largely for the purpose
of helping to combat the terrible infantile mortality rate and instituted
as an act of faith by Sir John Atkins, who was appalled by the condition
of children brought to his surgical clinic.
There have been such projects as the Zymotic
Enteritis campaign conducted in 1924/25; outstanding and unique work
in the abatement of overcrowding and in connection with the repair of
houses under Section 9 of the 1936 Housing Act; original work in connection
with houses in multiple occupation; investigations in connection with the
hygiene of public houses and their cellars; a Borough food premises survey
in 1948 followed by a Clean Food Campaign and Food Hygiene Exhibition in
1950; pioneering work in connection with old people's welfare, and in
connection with rodent control and the eradication of bed bugs in the 'bed
bug blitz' in 1946. Most recently the Borough has established one of the
first General Improvement Areas under the 1969 Housing Act, and the National
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children have established their first
Battered Baby' investigation centre in North Kensington. The local efforts
to ensure a clean atmosphere will be brought to fruition by the completion
of the final Smoke Control Areas during the current year.
The Borough has had a remarkable influence on such
Public Health legislation as The Meat Regulations, 1924; the Preservatives
in Food Regulations, 1925; the Food Hygiene Regulations; the 1936 Housing
Act (frequently referred to as the Lord Balfour of Burleigh Act); Hostel
Byelaws; and the Housing Acts of 1961, 1964 and 1969, particularly in their
relation to houses in multiple occupation.
Having lost the Maternity and Child Welfare establishments
to the London County Council in 1948, the Borough repossessed them in 1965
and have since added three health centres - Walmer Road; Holmefield House,
Kensal New Town; and the Violet Melchett Centre. Currently there are in