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Health Visitors. Close co-operation is here needed, and it
would be of advantage to the Department, and, I believe, to
the work generally, if the Health Visiting Staff attended the
Dispensary. It would, I am sure, bring about a closer coordination
between treatment and prevention. There is, too,
the need of a Committee in Bromley to deal with the aftercare
of the tuberculous patient.
The Health Department's main duty in tuberculosis is
prevention, rather than treatment, and whatever we are
doing to improve the environment of the people must have
its results in the control of this infection. The crux of the
whole problem lies with the infant. It has been repeatedly
proved that tuberculosis in the adult arises in the main from
a childhood infection. It then follows that if we are to prevent
tuberculosis we must remove the infant from the proximity
of infected persons, and especially from the infected
mother. In Bromley 53 babies under visitation have tubercular
parentage; 15 of these babies were under 1 year of age on
December 31st, 1925. The necessity of ante-natal warning
to the pregnant and tubercular mother is just one instance
of the desirability of close co-operation between Tuberculosis
Dispensary and the Maternity and Child Welfare Service.
Provision of open-air hospitals for the infant so removed
from infection, the necessity of controlling and preventing
the tubercular infection of milk and other foodstuffs, combined
with environmental improvement, will all help to
complete our preventive steps, and help to prevent each year
the spread of the infection.
Two additional statutes came into force during 1925
dealing with the tubercular patient, viz.:—
Section 62, Public Health Acts, 1925, gives power to a
local authority to remove by order of a Court of Summary
Jurisdiction an infectious pulmonary tubercular patient to
suitable hospital or institution. There are certain necessary