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59
General Practitioner Services—Health Centres.
A main feature of the personal practitioner services is to be
the development of Health Centres. The object is that the Health
Centre system, based on premises technically equipped and staffed
at public cost, shall afford facilities both for the general medical
and dental services and also for many of the special clinic services
of the local health authorities, and sometimes also for outpost
clinics of the hospital and specialist services. Besides forming a
base for these services, the Centres will also be able to serve as
bases for various activities in health education.
The Act makes it the duty of the County and County Borough
Councils to provide, equip, staff and maintain the new Health
Centres to the satisfaction of the Minister. The local authorities
will directly administer such of their own local clinic facilites as
they may provide in the Centres. Doctors and dentists, however,
who use the new Centres while participating in the general personal
practitioner service will be in contact only with the new Executive
Councils, and it will be for those Councils to arrange with the local
authorities for the use of the Centres' facilities by those doctors
and dentists.
Local Government Services.
This part of the health service comprises the local and
domiciliary services which are appropriate to local government.
The Act unifies these services in the existing Major Local Authorities
—the county and county borough councils.
For most of these services, the Act required the local health
authorities to indicate to the Minister the way in which they intended
to carry out their responsibilities, and it required the Minister's
general approval.
(a) Maternity and Child Welfare and Midwifery.
The Act makes it the duty of every local health authority to
make arrangements for the care of expectant and nursing mothers
and of children under five years of age who are not attending
school and who are therefore not covered by the school health
service. Their arrangements will include ante-natal clinics for the
care of expectant mothers, post-natal and child clinics, the provision
of such things as cod liver oil, fruit juices and other dietary supplements
and, in particular, a priority dental service for expectant
mothers and young children.