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Premature Infants.
Three premature baby outfits have been provided by the Borough Council on
loan free of charge to those homes where a premature infant is born and where
. inadequate facilities are available for nursing the infant at home or for various
reasons transfer to hospital is not desired. Each outfit includes a treasure cot,
blankets, infant clothes, hot-water bottles, thermometers, feeding pipettes, etc.
At the 5th July these outfits were transferred to the London County Council.
Arrangements were made in April for Health Visitors to attend St. Mary,
Islington Hospital for 1 hour, three mornings a week, to refresh their knowledge on
the care of premature infants.
Home Helps and Domestic Helps.
During the year there was an increased demand for Home Help assistance for
the elderly chronic sick. This is to be understood since, owing to the restriction on
hospital admissions, there were many who could not be admitted to hospital or only
admitted after a greater delay than in the past. Such persons, therefore, needed a
greater degree of attention in their own homes and this added to the requests made for
home help assistance.
As will be realised the average length of stay of a Help in confinement cases is
usually 2 weeks, though there have been an increasing number of Home Help cases
where extension of the service has been granted for varying periods. In Domestic
Help cases, however, the help extends over varying periods, many of them indefinitely.
The majority of them are part-time cases, where the number of hours help required
may vary considerably from only 3 hours to 20 or 30 a week, and this part of the
service calls for a great deal of organisation satisfactorily to fit in as many as
possible of those so urgently in need of help.
Cases dealt with for the first six months of 1948:—
Home Helps 152
Domestic Helps 146
The following were on the Approved List of Home Helps available for both services:—
at 5.7.48 at 31.12.48
Employed on regular basis 17 17
On intermittent basis—whole-time 19 17
part-time 23 76
Emergency Obstetric Unit.
A discussion of the Unit and a brief account of its history and work was given in
the Annual Report for 1947. In the period to 5th July, 1948, the Unit was called out
for 8 cases. In every one of these cases it was found necessary to give a blood