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by full-time Council personnel who devote their entire time to these
duties. From next July the public health ambulance service and, too,
the arrangements for the removal of infectious patients pass into the
hands of the County Council.
LABORATORY FACILITIES.
The public health laboratory work of the district is now undertaken
at the Public Health Laboratories at Colindale, the change being made in
May. The arrangements are working smoothly. The laboratory sends
a van to a number of collecting points about mid-day, these being the
South Harrow Isolation Hospital, the Public Health Offices on the Hill,
and the Central Fire Station, Pinner. The van also collects from the
Harrow Hospital. Its last collection from the neighbourhood is at the
Hendon Isolation Hospital, at which specimens from this district can be
left. The following is a summary of the work done by the laboratory
in regard to the examination of clinical material from persons from this
area in the last six months of the year: 241 nose and throat swabs for
K.L.B., hæmolytic streptococci or the organisms of Vincent's angina;
20 specimens of faeces for organisms of dysentery or food poisoning;
11 samples of sputum for the tubercle bacillus; three specimens for the
presence of the whooping cough organism, and 18 samples of milk. In
addition 105 nose and throat swabs from patients in the Isolation Hospitals
were sent for examination,
This laboratory service is a great improvement on that available
to the general practitioner before the war, the then arrangements necessitating
postal transport of the specimens, a practice which had the
disadvantage not only of lapse of time before the results were known,
but also in certain cases deterioration of the specimens with resulting
wrong results. Another weakness of the previous practice was the
detachment of the doctors from the laboratory. The present service
gets over these difficulties and it is anticipated that growing use will be
made of the laboratory service by general practitioners not only in their
submission of specimens, but in their direct approach and contact with
the workers in the laboratory for discussion as to what help might be
available in certain cases, what tests might with advantage be carried
out, and details on the submission of clinical material. Visits by the
doctors to the laboratory are encouraged by the director, Dr. Robert
Cruickshank. The laboratory staff have in many areas been of great
help to the local authority in undertaking investigations into the cause of
outbreaks of infection.