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DIVISION 5, comprising the boroughs of Bethnal Green, Poplar, Stepney and the City of
London
Dr. G. O. Mitchell reports:
Premises—The minor ailments sessions held at the St. Cecilia's school treatment centre,
Commercial Road, E.l, ceased at the end of the Christmas term 1959 when the premises
reverted to the voluntary committee. Sincere thanks are tendered to the St. Cecilia's
Voluntary Committee for their enthusiastic co-operation for so many years. It is proposed
to re-establish this school treatment centre early in 1960 in the adjacent Marion Richardson
school.
Chiropody—From November, 1959 two additional chiropody sessions have been held
each week.
Quadruplets—These children, arrangements for whose early home care were described
last year, continued to make satisfactory progress, with a home help and a nursery nurse
assisting the mother.
Prophylaxis—The poliomyelitis vaccination clinic at the Guildhall continued to attract
large numbers of young people and attendances during April reached a peak of more than
1,300 a session on several occasions. Sessions were then being held four days weekly to
meet the greatly increased demand.
The scheme launched in the autumn of 1958 for sending an inoculation team to City
business houses continued with mounting activity throughout the early months of the year.
It was followed by a large scale programme for the inoculation of school children, which
with the active co-operation of the teaching staffs, was centred mainly on the schools. The
numbers coming forward for first injections fell off appreciably during the autumn, allowing
more freedom to deal with the peak period of third injections.
Considerable success attended these efforts to inoculate a substantial proportion of the
young City workers; the results of similar efforts in the three East London boroughs, in
spite of continued and well directed publicity and the setting up of evening clinics (which
had to be abandoned after several weeks owing to lack of support), were disappointing.
Mothercraft and home-making—The class mentioned rather hopefully last year foundered
in July, 1959 owing to lack of support. Hopes of inaugurating another such class in another
part of the division have not been abandoned.
Health education—Increasing health education activities during the year led to a gratifying
increase in numbers attending the sessions. A weekly evening mothercraft class has been
held at the Wellington Way centre for over a year, and is well attended by expectant mothers
who have booked at hospitals and who are out at work during the day. A number of
husbands also attend with their wives. Talks to student nurses and medical students continued
to be given, and there were occasional talks to outside bodies. The sisters from the
London hospital asked to see something of the work of the local health authority and
arrangements were made for two parties of approximately 40 each to spend an afternoon
with the health visitors, school nursing sisters and at day nurseries; a new and encouraging
sign of liaison.
Prevention of break-up of families—The divisional co-ordinating committee and its intermediate
case conference met on 18 occasions during the year and dealt with 41 families,
the services of specially trained home helps being supplied to seven families to assist the
mother with budgeting, cooking and general household management. Successes are not
spectacular, but are sufficiently encouraging to warrant continuing the efforts.
Home nursing equipment—During 1959, 128 items of equipment were loaned to 115
households. These included commodes, foam rubber mattresses, Penryn and other hoists,
wheelchairs, etc. At the end of the year, 125 articles were still on loan to 103 households.
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