View report page

crease in the rest of the population, and to the fact that
the number of fresh cases each year has been relatively constant.
During 1946, 255 patients were recommended for treatment
in Sanatorium (compared with 237 in 1939).
The waiting time for the individual patient has increased
considerably during the past two years. The average
waiting period for new and early cases is approximately 3
months, the time being longer for patients with more advanced
disease. Such a wait must be deplored, especially
when this means that the patient must remain at home in a
house or flat often overcrowded and almost always unsuitable.
There is, unfortunately, no immediate remedy. The
position has been brought about by shortage of staff, more
particularly nursing and domestic, and the consequent
closure of beds in the sanatoria. There seems no likelihood
of any improvement until new methods of reoruitment and
administration comc into being.
The position is even worse with regard to the urgent
admission to General Hospitals of advanced or acutely ill
cases of tuberculosis. The number of beds available in
tuberculosis wards of the Hospitals in the County is wholly
inadequate, and there are no wards of this type in Stepney.
Advanced cases slowly going downhill often have to wait 6
months for a vacancy while harassed relatives do their best
to cope with them. Only very occasionally an urgent case is
found a bed at short notice, and then with great difficulty,
and often in a non-T.B. ward of a general hospital.
While this situation would be serious in any area, in
Stepney, with its badly housed population and its considerable
number of common lodging houses, the position is even
more lamentable. Lodging houses and the small, ill-ventilated
and usually overcrowded dwellings, which still form a
part of the Borough, are quite unsuitable places for the
care of acutely ill and infectious oases of tuberculosis.
It is not possible to treat such patients adequately in
such surroundings, and the danger of infecting other members
of the household is ever present.
The reason for the shortage of beds is, as with the
Sanatoria, lack of staff. The remedy is presumably the
same. It would appear possible, however , for a larger proportion
of the present numbers of medical beds available
to be allocated to the treatment and care of the tuberculous,
and so to close a dangerous and ever-widening gap in
the Tuberculosis Scheme. If no attempt is made to remedy
this defect in treatment, it is not difficult to foresee
an increase in this infectious disease in the future.
-10-