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PERSONAL HEALTH SERVICES
MATERNITY AND CHILD HEALTH SERVICES
There are thirteen Maternity and Child Health Centres in the Borough,
some in purpose-built or adapted accommodation and others in rented premises.
Streatham Vale Child Health Clinic, at which one child health session a
week only was held, was closed due to declining attendances on 24th June, 1971,
and the session transferred to Streatham Common Maternity and Child Health
Centre where more satisfactory clinic facilities are readily available. In
reaching this decision, the Committee were influenced by the fact that many of
the persons using the Streatham Vale Clinic were from Mitcham and Wandsworth,
and that most of the users attend not for clinic treatment but to purchase welfare
foods and nutrients.
Mothers attend at child health centres with infants from the age of two
weeks for the purpose of getting advice from health visitors and clinic doctors
about mothercraft and care of their children and for routine developmental
examinations by clinic medical officers. Mothers may attend as often as they
wish but are ir vited to attend for routine developmental examinations, at three
monthly intervals for the first year. Thereafter, they should attend at six
monthly intervals until the child's second birthday, after which they should
attend at least once yearly for medical examination. As required, children
are referred for further developmental examinations to the Borough's
Developmental Clinics held at selected child health centres where they are seen
by specialists in developmental paediatrics, who refer them to assessment centres,
if necessary, or continue to keep them under supervision.
Other services available for children at the centres include routine
prophylaxis against diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, poliomyelitis and
measles, as well as creche facilities. A letter was received from the Department
of Health and Secial Security reviewing the indications for offering vaccination
against smallpox in Great Britain at the present time. The area of the world
in which smallpox now exists and the population in which transmission of
smallpox is still occurring have been greatly reduced. The chances of introduction
of smallpox into Britain have substantially diminished and it is considered that
the number of serious complications from vaccination in childhood, though few,
is now out of proportion to the risk to children from smallpox. The Secretary
of State has therefore accepted the advice of the Joint Committee on Vaccination
and Immunisation that vaccination against smallpox need not now be
recommended as a routine procedure in early childhood and this procedure
has discontinued in Lambeth in August 1971. Protection will be offered
however, to travellers to and from areas of the world where smallpox is
endemic or where eradication programmes are in progress.