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24
made for this accommodation is £1 per week for each patient
admitted. Fifteen patients had at the close of the year been
sent there.
Progress has been made towards the provision of a Hospital
for the District, for which a site at Beddington Corner was
secured in 1895. Soon after the commencement of the year, Mr.
Chart, the Surveyor, was entrusted with the task of preparing
plans for the necessary buildings, for the accommodation of 28
beds, or about 1 per 1,000 of the population. These plans,
which have been submitted informally to the Medical Officer and
Architect of the Local Government Board, and amended generally
in accordance with their suggestions, are now practically
complete.
There will be three blocks for patients, two of ten beds each,
and an isolation block of eight beds, where more than one
disease can be simultaneously treated. Besides these there will
also be (1) the administrative building, where the entire staff of
nurses and servants will be housed, and which will also include a
laboratory for bacteriological and chemical work; (2) the disinfecting
block, which will include the hospital laundry and
disinfecting station for the District as well as the Hospital; and
(3) a mortuary and small discharging room, the latter of which
it is hoped will also prove useful for disinfecting people exposed
to infection.
The Council has already purchased an ambulance, which
will be ready for use at the commencement of the year.
The District is now, therefore, temporarily equipped for the
isolation in hospital of cases of scarlet fever, diphtheria, and
typhoid fever, and ought soon to be provided with a Hospital of
its own. This is a matter for congratulation, especially as it is
easy to forecast that the first mentioned disease will make its
appearance felt more decisively in the coming year. There has
been no real prevalence of scarlet fever since 1893.