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of survival. Unfortunately, if antibodies are present, we cannot tell
whether or not the baby will need a transfusion until it is born, but we
can make, and we do make, all preparations to deal with such a baby.
These Antibodies do not harm the mother in any way but she must
not become pregnant again until they have disappeared from her blood,
which is in about two years, and this means further regular visits to the
hospital for blood testing.
The chances of an infant being affected in this way are very small,
but for the sake of those few who get it, all these tests must be done on
every Rhesus Negative mother, so that we can cut down still further the
number of babies born dead, and also the number of those dying in the
first month of life.
The fact that a mother has had one of these babies affected by this
disease does not mean that she cannot have a healthy baby. She can, and
she does often, but in this matter she should always consult a consulting
obstetrician as to further pregnancies. All obstetricians are only too
happy to explain to mothers and fathers as simply as it is possible this
rather complicated subject.
HEALTH CENTRES
The question as to when we are going to have Health Centres in
Barking is so constantly cropping up from such a large number of people
that I feel I cannot write to these people individually but I would like
to make a few remarks to all of them in a general way.
The curious thing is that we do have Health Centres in Baiting;
this is an anomaly and arises by reason of the fact that some of our Clinics
have been recognised as Health Centres for a particular purpose.
Generally, our Clinics were growing towards the conception of a Health
Centre, and to my mind it was a thousand pities that we were stopped
issuing prescriptions for medicaments at these Clinics.
At these clinics, apart from the services designed essentialy for
children and mothers, there were the public schemes which catered for all
members of the public, i.e. dental, chiropody and specialist clinics for
eyes, ear, nose and throat, skin and orthopædics. In other words, apart
from a domiciliary service, these Clinics were so far as possible run on
Health Centre lines. But the conception of a Health Centre which
the public so rightly hold is a place where general practitioners will carry
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