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were formerly assisted, and the activities of the inspectors have to
be limited to dealing with those matters of real sanitary significance
and with matters with which they have actual powers to deal. Such
matters as routine housing inspection have to be left untouched,
not only because of the shortage of staff, but because it would not
be possible to enforce the carrying out of work necessary to comply
with any notices that might be served, because of the owner's
difficulty in obtaining materials and labour. Apart from the fact
that the Meat Depot takes up practically the whole time of one of
the inspectors, their availability for their strict duties as sanitary
inspectors is further curtailed by the senior sanitary inspector
having been appointed chief billeting officer, so that the time of
himself and of his colleagues has been taken up in finding billets,
more particularly for the staffs of the hospitals in the district.
Apart from the few weeks following the outbreak of hostilities,
when the time of the health visitors was almost entirely devoted
to A.R.P., more particularly at the first aid posts, they have been
enabled to carry on their ordinary duties and, up to the end of
the year, it had not been necessary to use them to any great extent
for other purposes.
No special difficulties arose in the case of the work of the
midwives. The transfer of population from one area to another
and the closure of some hospitals resulted in their having to attend
patients who were newcomers to the district, but as they were,
to some extent, relieved of attending some they had already booked
because these had left the district, the numbers they actually had
to attend were well within their scope and no real difficulties arose.
The midwives were of great assistance in the first few weeks of the
war, when practically all the ante-natal clinics had to close down,
as they arranged for numbers of their patients to attend at their,
the midwives', homes, and were there seen by the assistant medical
officer.
The war has made little difference to the isolation hospitals.
So few cases were notified that it was possible to close down the
Honeypot Lane hospital and for the rest of the year no patients
were admitted here. The diphtheria block at South Harrow cannot
be satisfactorily rendered blast or splinter proof. Diphtheria
patients were therefore transferred to one of the other blocks and
scarlet fever patients were admitted to the old diphtheria block
with arrangements for the transport of these patients to the more
sound scarlet fever block on the occurrence of an air raid warning.
Owing to the transfer of large masses of the population of the
country and to the fact that many of the males would be in the
Army, the Registrar General devised arrangements for dealing with
the statistical treatment of non-civilian deaths and of transferable
births and deaths, the purpose being to ensure as far as possible
that the rates reflected the different conditions in the areas in which