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4
During the year a Maternity Department was opened at Chase
Farm Hospital and most of the patients who formerly would have
been admitted to the North Middlesex Hospital can now be admitted
to Chase Farm Hospital. The Emergency Obstetrical Unit now
operates from Chase Farm Hospital. Towards the end of the
year, sufficient Gas and Air Analgesia Apparatus had been secured
and a sufficient number of Midwives trained in its use, to contemplate
commencing the Service in the district, and the Service was
started soon after the end of the year.
The three Day Nurseries continued to work to capacity, each
Nursery having a continuously long waiting list. Some progress
was made towards planning to open another Day Nursery to meet
the heavy demand. Staffing difficulties were also experienced in
this branch of the service, and it is surprising to me how few girls
appear sufficiently interested in this type of work to become Student
Nursery Nurses—a training, not only leading to an attractive and
useful career, but one which would be expected to appeal to the
natural instincts of many more girls.
During the year we welcomed to the staff Doctor C. E. Jamison
as Deputy Medical Officer of Health and Miss Smyth as Nonmedical
Supervisor of Midwives. I take this opportunity of recording
my appreciation of the efforts of all the staff when shortages
and frequent changes made their duties more onerous.
This Report for 1947, written as it is in 1948, seems a particularly
appropriate occasion on which to comment on some aspects
of the Health Services of Enfield during the present century, not
only because 1948 has been selected for the commencement of the
operation of the National Health Service Act, 1946, but also
because Public Health services received their first statutory recognition
in the Public Health Act of 1848, and the first Medical
Officer of Health in this country had been appointed in 1847. Since
these early days, much Public Health and Local Government
Legislation has been passed and with the success attending Medical
Officers of Health in their fight against adverse environmental
conditions, new duties of a more clinical character were laid on
Medical Officers of Health, culminating eventually in 1929 in
Hospital administration. Now the National Health Service Act
of 1946, in addition to the changes to be made in the Hospital,
Specialist, General Medical and Dental Practitioner, and other
Services, will take from local authorities like Enfield the more
personal Health Services, and place this responsibility on the
shoulders of the new Local Health Authorities, namely, County
Councils, while removing from County Councils the responsibility
for Hospital provision. It is to be hoped that complete co-operation
will exist between the various statutory authorities concerned with