View report page

Influenza.
The Chief Medical Officer of the Ministry of Health had written to the County
Medical Officer to ask Liaison Committees to consider the emergency arrangements
needed in the event of a serious outbreak of influenza. The Liaison Committee (and
other similar committees in Middlesex) made a variety of suggestions for augmenting
the general practitioner and home help services in the event of a serious influenza
epidemic. Fortunately the epidemic was successfully dealt with by the existing
services.
X rays in Pregnancy.
Dr. Alice Stewart of Oxford has suggested that leukaemia in childhood is frequently
associated with ante-natal pelvic X-rays. The Committee heard papers on this
subject from Dr. Topham, the Consultant Radiologist, and from Mr. Rosser, the
Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist, who described the risks of and the
indication for X-Ray during pregnancy.
Dr. Scott, the County Medical Officer of the London County Council, had arranged
that Chest X-rays of expectant mothers should not be carried out during the first
three months of pregnancy.
After hearing the two papers the Committee considered that serious damage could
be done to the foetus by extensive radiological examination and for that reason
accepted Mr. Rosser's dictum that "no woman should have a pelvic X-ray except in the
fortnight following a normal menstrual period during the childbearing years of her
life."
Proposed Hospital at Nortbwick Park.
The Committee expressed concern at the abandonment of the proposal to build a
general hospital at Northwick Park by the Board of Governors of Charing Cross
Hospital. The existence of this proposal for many years has served as a reason to
defer the building of other new hospitals in the area and also to prevent the much
needed extension of the hospitals which now serve the district.
The Committee is strongly supporting the resolution sent to the North West
Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board by the Willesden Borough Council.
The Colindale Hospital.
There is a non-tuberculous chest unit for males over the age of 16 of twentyfive
beds at Colindale Hospital, for the investigation and treatment of pulmonary
conditions other than tuberculosis. Cases of cardiac failure etc. are also admitted,
but its aim in the main is to treat acute conditions or acute conditions in chronic
40