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112
facilities in Shoreditch which arises from the bombing of centre premises in that
borough.
School Health Service. At the end of the year the Divisional Health Committee
took over from the former voluntary committee responsibility for the administration
of the Hackney school treatment centre. Thus there are now 3 centres under direct
control and 2 managed by voluntary committees.
The medical inspection and treatment of schoolchildren continued smoothly.
An additional rheumatism supervisory clinic, and two additional vision clinics were
started during the year.
Under an arrangement between the Council and the North-East Metropolitan
Regional Hospital Board a three-months' campaign was started in July to deal with
the considerable number of schoolchildren in Divisions 3, 4 and 5 who had been
recommended for operative treatment of enlarged tonsils and adenoids. This scheme
had to be suspended after only one month, owing to the incidence of poliomyelitis.
The nutrition clinics have been very fully attended, and the minor ailment
treatment given daily in the school treatment centres has been supplemented by
school nursing sisters who hold daily sessions in two schools.
Division 5, comprising the boroughs of Bethnal Green, Poplar, Stepney and the
City of London.
Dr. G. O. Mitchell reports:—
There are no startling developments of the service in the Division during the
year to be recorded. Many of our clinics are held in buildings which leave a good
deal to be desired, and we had hoped to have a comprehensive health centre in
Poplar, but this project 'has been postponed for the present, and our plans for the
future were further frustrated when the former centre of the Royal College of
St. Katherine in Brunswick Road, Poplar, was denied us by reason of its having
become derelict and decayed. We had hoped to rehabilitate it and transfer to it
some of our neighbouring clinics, and so restore it to its pre-blitz condition of a
flourishing maternity and child welfare centre. These disappointments have necessitated
some reorientation in planning, and the immediate future is still a little hazy.
The remoter outlook is necessarily wrapped in obscurity, and the longed-for materialisation
of health centres seems, and quite likely is, very far away. However, the
services continue to function satisfactorily; but in the direction of development and
improvement we are forced to proceed, in the felicitous translation of the author of
"Religio Medici," with "celerity tempered with cunctation."
The educational needs of maladjusted and backward children have been recognised,
and we have three classes for maladjusted children. The teachers of these
classes work in co-operation with the Child Guidance Clinic and the School Doctor.
In addition, we hope to have six classes for backward children as soon as the supply
of teachers in the East London area will permit.
During the year we have concentrated upon diphtheria immunisation in the
schools and have given special attention to the immunisation records in the school
registers. As a result of these efforts it would seem that in the majority of schools
in the Division the percentage of immunised children is relatively high; but the
need for a close watch on the immunisation of school children will continue.
The incidence of scabies among school children continued to decline, the number
of children treated at bathing centres being 106 in 1949 compared with 237 in 1948,
and there has been further improvement in the cleanliness of the school child. For
a short time during the year a number of beds for tonsillectomy cases was made