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10
of even the meanest habitation In the borough by the Health Visitor In her
dally round, Infants receive the care and nurture which Is their birthright.
East Ham always has been to the fore In education of the community In
health matters, and our health visitors have extended their efforts to cover
advice to diabetics of all ages In the management of diet and Insulin rigime,
and have also taken an Increasing part In the supervision of old people In
their homes, many of whom require advice and help of various kinds.
The health visitors have also built up a useful system of surveillance
of children who may prove to be Ineducable when the time comes for school
entry at the age of five years. They keep careful records of the milestones
of development In these children, and bring mother and child to me for consultation
at appropriate Intervals. In this way the parents become adjusted
to the mental retardation and other physical and social shortcomings of their
child, and overcome the dreadful urge to reject him which many of them
experience. Parents who have had this health visitor contact during the
early years will accept at the proper time the decision that the child Is
ineducable, a decision which provokes bitter hostility, affront and resentment
in those who have nurtured their child with unseeing eyes and shut minds,
burdened with a load of secret guilt and anxieties.
But education does not stop here. Each year doctors from many parts of
the civilised world come to East Ham to view our health and social services,
and take back to their own lands the lessons they have learned. This Council
in their wisdom affords these men and women every facility for study and
observation, and we must ensure that what they see and learn is of the highest
standard and will bear the closest scrutiny.
This borough leads also In the close co-operation that exists between
the general practitioners and local authority services. In the maternity
field, the local general practitioners are given the help they need to keep
their patients for domiciliary confinement or ante-natal supervision and yet
have available for them all the clinic and ancillary services. G.P.'s who
conduct paediatric clinics in their own surgeries Eire given the help of a
health visitor for the area, and close-working harmony of the family doctor
and the Duly Authorised Officers team ensures the welfare of the mentally
sick and mental defectives.
With the aid of our District Nursing Service and the Health Visitors,
the G.P. also plays an Increasing role in the care of old people In their
own homes, and with the shortage of beds for the chronic sick this work is
Invaluable In an area where one person in eight or nine Is over the age of 65.
In fact, the local doctors take a lively interest in the solution of many
medico-social problems in collaboration with the Health Department, so that
we may say an attempt has been made to break down the artificial barriers
between preventive and curative medicine, and it Is hoped that the goal of
the practice of medicine as one Indivisible art is in sight.
There is another field in which the Council's enlightened and humanitarian
policies play a big part, and that Is in the employment and rehabilitation
of disabled persons. It Is notoriously difficult to place persons
In suitable employment who are healed of tuberculosis or mental breakdown
or suffer physical Incapacity of congenital or accidental origin. Many
such workers find congenial employment in the wide range of local authority
services, and can continue to live full and useful lives.
Put one of the great outstanding problems Is in connection with 'Food
Poisoning', a wholly preventable condition which calls for continuous
education In personal, domestic and community hygiene at all levels. The
loss of working hours for adults and schooling for children is utterly
indefensible in the light of the preventabllity of the Illness, not to
mention the physical distress experienced by those attacked.