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4
Report of the School Medical
Officer, 1944.
Between the end of 1944 and the issue of this report, the
Erith Education Committee has ceased to exist and the Kent
County Council has become the Local Education Authority. My
fifth report as School Medical Officer for Erith is also the last
report of a school medical officer of this town after the school
medical service has been in existence for 37 years.
I can only speak personally of the last five years and in
retrospect this has been as difficult a period of time as it is
possible to imagine, complicated by every kind of known aerial
attack with consequent oscillations and variations of the school
population between each fresh evacuation. And yet they have
been years of definite progress each marked by some new
development of the school medical service which I think should
be recorded.
The recruitment of a full time dental officer in 1940, the
new separate dental clinic in 1941 adjacent to the minor ailment
clinic, the new weekly skin clinics for scabies and the doubling
of the specialist orthopaedic sessions in 1942, the erection of
the new Hainault School clinic and the inauguration of a new
monthly specialist aural clinic in 1943, the doubling of the ear,
nose and throat clinic, and the increase in the percentage of
school population examined at the routine medical inspections
from 13 per cent, in 1940 to 79 per cent, of the school children
in 1944, are all extensions and developments worthy of mention,
to be compared with the next five years.
I have been privileged during the last few months to
participate in a good deal of work done on behalf of the noncounty
boroughs in efforts made to obtain some practical
recognition of their past successes in the field of School
Medicine, and in this I have met County Medical Officers and
Medical Officers of the Ministry. It is agreed, I think, that
the future practice of the School Medical Service will be
founded on a genuine partnership between the County Authority
and those who are to work in the Divisional Executive, and this
has led to the appointment of Divisional School Medical Officers
and the delegation of much local administration to these Officers.
The local Medical Officer of Health has been given the right
in manjr cases to include in his annual Public Health report an
account of his work done as Divisional School Medical Officer