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medical examination of pupils attending maintained schools in three age
groups, the treatment of certain conditions and the measures for ascertaining
handicapped pupils. The arrangements for treatment are made
by the Area Committee, the same medical, dental and nursing staff providing
the special services for mothers and young children under the
National Health Service Act and for school children under the Education
Act. The health visitors under the Superintendent, Miss A. Clifford, who
carry out their home visits to mothers and young children and attend
the various maternity and child welfare clinics, also act as school nurses
under the Education Act.
The third section deals more especially with the environmental as
contrasted with the personal health services referred to in the previous
section. These are, of course, the basic health services of any district.
If they are not sound the health of the district can never be good, no
matter how effective the personal services may be. In most districts, most
of these services were at one time provided by the District Council itself.
The chief exception was the provision of water which in many towns was
originally supplied by private enterprise and has remained independent
of the local authority. The recent development of the arrangements for
sewage disposal which is now carried out by another body, not the District
Council, resulted from the growth not merely of this but of adjoining
districts. This list of local health services should really include information
about all the parks and open spaces, recreation grounds and playing
fields which contribute so much to the healthiness and to the amenities
of a district.
The next section deals essentially with the work of the sanitary
inspectors. The sanitary inspectorate comprises the chief sanitary inspector,
Mr. S. N. King, the deputy chief sanitary inspector, nine sanitary
inspectors and one assistant to the inspectors. Except for such special
work as that concerned with the campaign for clean food and the supervision
of shops, all work arising in any district is carried out by the
sanitary inspector for that district. Broadly these duties can be classed
as those arising out of housing, the supervision of such premises as factories,
the control of conditions that might give rise to nuisance, the
arrangements for the protection of food in its passage in some instances
from the earliest stage until it reaches the consumer, and measures for the
control of some infections. The figures in the statistical summary indicate
the vast volume of this work which is carried out unobstrusively and
probably unknown to many burgesses, work which is concerned not only
to remedy nuisances or other conditions which have already occurred,
but which is also aimed at preventing those conditions ever arising.
The last section deals with certain of the communicable diseases. The
improvement in the sanitation of the country in the last century did much
to lead to the virtual elimination of such infectious diseases as cholera,
smallpox and typhus fever which had even through much of the century
wrought such havoc. This century has seen further improvements.
Typhoid fever is now relatively rare, probably because of the satisfactory
state of the public water supply. Smallpox is absent except when occurring
secondary to the introduction into the country of unrecognised cases.