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7
CIVIL DEFENCE.
The war imposed upon the Public Health Department numerous additional and
unfamiliar tasks, and in 1940 these increased in number and variety. During the
course of the year many of these duties took on a closer relationship to the public
health, more particularly in connection with the new problems created by large
numbers of the inhabitants resorting to public air-raid shelters. For this reason
alone it is not inappropriate that a brief note of this side of the Department's work
should be included in a report on the health of the Borough. The following list
gives some indication of the more important of these war-time activities:—
First aid posts—fixed and mobile.
Anti-gas cleansing centres.
Stretcher party organisation.
Food decontamination.
Emergency mortuaries.
Air-raid shelter sanitation.
Medical aid posts at shelters.
Vermin disinfestation of shelters and bedding.
Diphtheria immunisation in shelters.
Typhoid fever inoculation.
Examination, for chest conditions, of recruits for H.M. Forces.
Damaged foodstuffs disposal.
Medical supervision of rest centres and hostels.
Maternity and child welfare for refugees.
Emergency water supply distribution.
Private water supply examinations.
Contaminated water purification.
War-damaged property inspections.
Damaged drainage investigations.
Evacuation of young children, expectant mothers and infirm and aged
persons.
Refuges for children lost in air raids.
Health and war-time propaganda in shelters and elsewhere.
Report and Control Centre duties.
The great amount of administrative work associated with these functions,
together with the recruitment of personnel for the casualty services, arrangements
for training in first-aid for the whole of the Council's Civil Defence organisation,
and the provision and maintenance of transport, stores and equipment for the
services generally, have been carried out by the permanent officers of the Department
with the assistance of temporary clerical staff.
From time to time it has been found necessary, in the light of experience under
working conditions, to modify or extend certain services. During the year several
such changes took place, and improvements in the organisation and development of
the branches of Civil Defence for which the Department is responsible were effected.