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THE SIXTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT
on the
WILLESDEN MATERNITY HOSPITAL
for the Year 1946.
By ARNOLD WALKER, M.A., M.B., B.Ch., F.R.C.S., F.R.C.O.G.
The year 1946 is noteworthy for the fact that more patients were dealt with than in any previous year. This
has been done by discharging normal cases about the tenth instead of the fourteenth day, in accordance with the
advice of the Minister of Health as an emergency measure, to cope with the marked rise in the birth rate. This
measure was only adopted in June, and if it continues to be in force throughout 1947, a considerable increase in
the number of cases dealt with will be recorded for 1947. Although the number of patients in the hospital at
any one time remains about the same, the strain upon the midwives is much greater ; deliveries each month have
gone up from about 90 to about 120, and almost all the patients in the lying-in wards are in bed. The concentration
of newly delivered women increases the risk of infection and calls for most careful supervision. Although there
has been a chronic shortage of staff midwives, and although the work has been disturbed by the presence of decorators
for nearly eight months of the year, the puerperal pyrexia rate is the lowest recorded since the hospital opened.
The credit for this belongs to the matron and the sisters. The stillbirth rate and neonatal death-rate are also the
lowest recorded in these reports, but the maternal mortality rate has gone up. Three booked cases died, one from
post-partum haemorrhage, one from pulmonary embolism and one from heart failure in a woman with advanced
heart disease. Two emergency cases died, in neither of which was the cause of death clearly established. One
was considered to be due to embolism and the other to paralytic ileus following a Caesarean Section.