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Arrangements with a local branch of a Nursing Association for a district
nurse to visit home patients.
On the reverse side one must mention the failure to appoint a woman
Sanitary Inspector in the place of one who resigned eighteen months ago.
There are over 2,000 women employed in factories, etc., there are women outworkers,
and there are also the two public female lavatories requiring
supervision.
Indirect measures are the development of recreation grounds, tennis courts
and bowling greens, the fostering of allotments.
The above are the most important changes made during the past five
years, but it is difficult to say how far they are associated with any changes in
the health of the individual.
As regards the future, it may be possible to move on similar lines, and
the following are suggestions:—
(1) A bi-weekly removal of house refuse.
(2) The proper destruction of all house refuse by an incinerator
or dust destructor.
(3) The tar dressing of all roads.
Regarding the individual, it is difficult to say how far a public authority
can go without undermining his responsibility.
Some of the above benefits enumerated are only available to those whose
income is below a certain limit; the benefits of any measures pertaining to
"public health" should be free to all. Most of the measures introduced
recently is merely a subsidising of the income to benefit the individual, and to
introduce such measures under the guise of public health is certainly misleading.
The Guardians grant milk and medical treatment, the local authority
do the same—one is poor-law relief, the other ostensibly comes under public
health measures.
The future will see the merging of these two authorities ; in the meantime,
the local authority can devote its whole attention to the environment.
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