View report page

† All the patients are regarded as "referred" whether on medical or social grounds.
* This is a clinic for the fitting of intra uterine devices. Although it is a subsidiary
of the Greenwich Clinic Committee, patients are drawn from beyond the area of
Greenwich.
It is anticipated that the long-awaited National Health Service
(Family Planning) Act, now before Parliament, will already have
received the royal assent and be operative by the end of 1967. The
Minister of Health has re-emphasized that an adequate family
planning service is an essential part of family welfare which, in
many instances, will help to relieve the burden on other services
occasioned by physical ill-health and mental distress arising from
lack of knowledge and advice.
Existing powers of local health authorities enabling them to
provide (or arrange for other bodies to provide) advice on contraception,
etc., are extended by the Act which now permits the advice
and supplies, previously only available to medical cases, to be
offered to persons on social grounds.
The Act empowers the local health authority, if it so desires,
to recover such charges for advice, prescriptions, substances or
appliances as it considers reasonable, having regard to the means
of the recipient.
Congenital Malformations
Congenital malformations probably constitute today's greatest
challenge to paediatrics and most advanced countries are seeking
to discover the aetiologies, the first step to which is the recording of
the various conditions.
Two serious methodological difficulties face the research
worker or statistician. Firstly, clear definitions of malformations
and defects which are to be the subjects of registration and with
which doctors, nurses and midwives must be fully conversant and,
secondly, duration of observation, for prolonged observation will