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3.
Our services for social welfare have bean even more active, the meal3 on
wheel3 service having required a further van, and the Holiday Home kept well
filled even during the winter months (thanks largely to the admirable liaison
with King Edward's Hospital Fund and the various local Health Authorities in
all parts of England). A further full-time Old People's Club is being
negotiated, and we have enlisted the aid of more voluntary visitors to
supplement the Council's welfare staff with evening visits to the homebound
In the body of this report, I have tried to indicate how these services
reduoe the pressure on hospital beds).
The Sanitary Inspectors have been more than usually occupied with
clearance areas and underground rooms this year, vacant sites also giving
more trouble. Their dealings with outworkers have taken more attention but
verminous premises have caused less worry, although more articles have been
treated by stream disinfection. The Inspectorate have already done good work
under the new Fireguards Regulations, and it is hoped that thi3 will cause a
lessening of tragedies among old people and young children.
The efforts of the Rodent staff continue to reduce the rat population,
complaints also having been fewer and of a less serious nature, especially in
dwelling houses.
Our food hygiene campaign has even further intensified, especially by
personal oontaot and the handing out of special leaflets to those concerned,
our new abbreviated leaflet having been handed also to the food handler in
each household where Sonne dysentery oocurred. Results have been manifest in
the absence of food poisoning, and it is hoped that the widespread health
education may soon bear fruit even in the households with dysentery, by
preventing recurrences. We have been able to reduce flybreeding by weekly
application of gammexane to all dustbins (through the good offices of the
Cleansing Departm3nt), but unfortunately the prevention of dysentery spread
demands active co-operation from each individual concerned, and, in the same
way that "driving a horse to the water" is not necessarily effective, so the
provision of free washing facilities and constant admonition about handwashing,
are slower in producing the desired barrier against spread of Sonne than of
flies. In other words, as I have said so often before, if everyone thoroughly
washed his (or her) hands immediately before handling food, and also after
visiting the "lavatory", Sonne dysentery would soon join the list of extinct
diseases, instead of being such a widespread source of discomfort and even of
danger.
I wish to place on reoord my great appreciation of the whole-hearted
efforts made by the staff again this year, and of the backing received from
the whole Council (especially the Health and Welfare Committees), as well as
for the financial support given so unstintingly by such bodies as the King
Edward's Hospital Fund, the Sun Babies Trustees and others too numerous to
mention individually.
Yours faithfully,
B. BROADBENT,
Medical Officer of Health.