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6. SUMMARY (FOR REFERENCE) OF NURSING ARRANGEMENTS,
HOSPITALS, AND OTHER INSTITUTIONS
AVAILABLE FOR THE DISTRICT.
(a) Nursing in the Home.
(i) The Plaistow Maternity Charity provide a staff of nurses,
who attend at the homes of the sick once or twice a day, carry
out such skilled nursing as required, and offer instructions
where advisable in hygienic home practices in relation to the
sick.
I understand that this Charity is willing to entertain the possibility
of extending its activities to cover the whole of Barking,
i.e., to include the Gale Street area.
(ii) For infectious diseases. In the event of an epidemic,
the Council can provide nurses for such cases as may require to
be nursed in their own homes.
The provision of adequate hospital accommodation for in- '
fectious diseases is the best way of dealing with these cases. It
would not be economic to build every house in such a way that
there would be readily available accommodation for isolating the
inmates. Further, if such structural amenities were present, it is
not to be supposed that actual nursing facilities would be generally
available.
*
My own personal opinion is that all infectious cases should
more and more be treated in hospital, and that, therefore, you have
been very wise in deciding, in planning your new infectious fever
hospital, to have available sufficient ground for 50 per cent, more
than the one bed per thousand of population which is the present
generally accepted standard for such hospitals.