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THE HEALTH OF BARKING
country, but a maternity unit is particularly dependent, if results are to be uniformly
good, upon a building with a first class layout. The danger of infection is always
present and only a rigid nursing technique combined with a good layout can make
the maternity hospital as safe from this standpoint as the patient's own home.
General District Nursing.
The less adequate the local hospital service, the more important becomes the
provision of a service of skilled nursing in the home; this is especially true of the
nursing of the aged for whom hospital accommodation is so scanty.
The work is carried out in Barking by the Plaistow Maternity Hospital and
District Nurses Home and the East Barking District Nursing Association to whom
you give considerable financial aid. During the year 1946, the visits paid by
nurses on this service totalled over 20,000.
Ambulance Service.
Your ambulance service, for the use of which no charge is made to residents
of the Borough, consists of three stretcher ambulances and two sitting case cars.
Altogether 9,045 patients were conveyed during the year, representing over
3,000 more than those conveyed during 1945.
We have now had two years' experience of this service since it became available
to the public without charge. During this period the number of calls has increased
progressively and it does not appear that the peak has yet been reached.
At the introduction of such a service, it was reasonably expected that the calls
would not be so large as to prevent us from having one vehicle out of commission
for repairs, whilst we operated with the remainder. This, unfortunately, has not
been possible, with a result that there has been difficulty in maintaining the service
at all scheduled times. This is particularly so with regard to the out-patient
services at the London Hospitals. The fact that delay, however, rarely exceeds
30 minutes must be regarded as a compliment to the efficiency of the service, when
it is remembered that the vehicles in use have to operate for a full 24 hours each day
and havt been in service for many years.
With this continuous rise in the number of calls, a point must soon be reached
when it will be necessary for the Council to consider their policy on this matter, in
order to determine the type of case for which a free ambulance service should be
available, or alternatively so to augment the number of vehicles and personnel that
no restriction need be imposed.
Home Helps.
In view of the increased demand for home helps, during the year you decided
to appoint 6 full-time home helps who, when not required to work in private homes,
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