View report page

131
Special breast feeding clinics for nursing mothers were continued in Shoreditch.
Mothers attend these clinics for test-feeds two or three times in a day, and receive
advice regarding feeding difficulties; 800 attendances were made during the year.
The weekly marriage advisory evening clinic was continued. An average of
between three and four attendances was made at each session.
Permission was given to the Family Planning Association to hold a second
weekly clinic in the division at Barton House welfare centre, in addition to that
already held at 28, Lower-Clapton Road.
After-care
of
tuberculous
patients
Handicratt classes were formeriy organised by each of the three chest clinics
in the division, but all except one, serving part of the borough of Hackney, had
lapsed during the war. To remedy this deficiency, suitable accommodation reasonably
accessible from all parts of the division was rented by the Council, and a class
was started on one afternoon a week, under the control of the local Tuberculosis
Care Committees. It is proposed in due course to extend these activities.
Housing
Over 130 applications for housing preference on medical grounds were dealt
with each week.
School
health
service
Nutrition and rheumatism clinics were well attended during the year. The
scheme introduced during 1949 under arrangements between the Council and the
North-East Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board to provide operative treatment
for enlarged tonsils and adenoids for school children, which was suspended in August
owing to the incidence of poliomyelitis, was restarted in November and was extended
to include children under five. Under this scheme 461 operations were carried out
during the year.
The expansion of the various services has placed a heavy burden on the staff,
and the success achieved is due in large measure to their zeal and efficiency, and
to the help and co-operation of the medical officers of health of Hackney, of Shoreditch,
and of Stoke Newington.
Division 5, comprising the boroughs of Bethnal Green, Poplar, Stepney and the
City of London.
Dr. G. 0. Mitchell reports:—
During 1950 we were able to begin to implement the Council's policy of providing
office accommodation for health visitors in the areas in which they work, rather
than at central points. The opportunity arose when it was decided to transfer the
ante-natal clinic from very unsuitable premises in Salmon Lane to the Limehouse
maternity and child welfare centre in Commercial Road. By some minor adaptations
at the latter premises we were able to accommodate not only this ante-natal clinic,
but also some health visitors hitherto housed at the offices of the Stepney public
he<h department. Plans were approved by the Divisional Health Committee for
similarly decentralising other health visitors early in 1951.
Domestic
help
The domestic help service continued to be much in demand, particularly in
the case of the aged and infirm. This is a very real contribution to the solution
)f the problem of the aged, and such requests for help will almost certainly continue
to increase. Difficulty, however, was still experienced in recruiting home helps, and
it the end of the year we were still somewhat below our permitted numbers. Some
reorganisation of this service was achieved by redefining the three districts, which
tvere hitherto conterminous with the boroughs of Bethnal Green, Poplar and Stepney,
rhe three new districts, now called Northern, Southern and Eastern, cut across
aorough boundaries and are more manageable administratively because of their
comparative equality in terms of demand for domestic help. While the Northern
listrict office remains in Cornwall Avenue, Bethnal Green, the Southern district
jffice, covering most of the borough of Stepney, has been transferred from Salmon
Lane to a modern office suite more centrally situated in Commercial Road. The
Eastern district office will be transferred early in 1951 from Poplar Town Hall to