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which occurred in mothers and babies at the Maternity Home,
and after their discharge, the Home was closed to further admissions
from March 17th until April 1st. The whole circumstances
were reported to the Ministry of Health, who sent one of their
Medical Officers to investigate the matter.
The following is the letter received from the Minister of
Health, as a result of the enquiry, dated June 23rd, together with
my report to the Committee, dated June 29th :—
44 I am directed by the Minister of Health to state that he has had under
consideration the report made by Dr. Dorothy Taylor, one of the Medical
Officers of the department, after her visit to the Ilford Maternity Home to
investigate the recent outbreaks of mastitis in women and of pemphigus and
dermatitis in infants at the Home, and to examine the system of administration
at the Home.
14 The Minister is advised that the administration of the Home under
normal conditions is well performed and that the routine technique and methods
are satisfactory. The extension of the accommodation at the beginning of the
year, and the consequent changes in administration and additions—to a large
extent temporary—to the staff, may have involved some passing disorganisation
of services and provided possibilities for an extension of infection which might
not have arisen under normal conditions, but the Minister is advised that careful
enquiry has not traced responsibility for the outbreaks to any failure of
technique or lack of care.
44 The course of the outbreaks suggests, however, that by way of special
precaution it would be desirable in the event of any similar outbreak in the
future for nasal and throat swabs of the nursing staff to be examined, and that
the nurses should wear masks while attending to the mothers' breasts and
while giving the infants to the mothers to be fed.
44 The Minister desires me to express his appreciation of the careful efforts
which were made by the medical staff, with the assistance of the nursing staff,
to investigate the causes of the outbreaks, and of the ready help they afforded
his Medical Officer in her investigations."
To the Chairman and Members of the
Maternity and Child Welfare Committee.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It would appear that there is a good deal of misconception with regard to
the cases of abscesses of the breast that have occurred at the Ilford Maternity
Home, and that there is some idea that these are due to negligence and that
they do not occur in other maternity institutions, or elsewhere.
It is therefore necessary to state that such cases occurred in Ilford women
apart from those that were confined in the Maternity Home, some of these