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*Tower Blocks
Thanks are due to the Housing Manager and his staff for the amount of co-operation
received.
Reference was made under child minding to the great increase in this field - a
substantial burden to be added to the Health Visitor's already heavy load.
District Nursing
During the year the main event affecting the District Nursing Service was the transfer
of the Training School from the former Lady Rayleigh Nurses Home to the Leyton Municipal
Offices. At the same time, due to the contraction in the amount of district nurse training
required because of other schools setting up elsewhere, the question arose as to whether the
North East Region of London was over-provided with district nurse training schools, there
being another relatively newly formed in Newham. Negotiations were opened with the Borough
of Newham with a view to seeing how far we might make common use of our facilities.
The policy of attaching district nurses in groups to general practitioners moved forward
slowly and it is to be hoped that by the middle of 1969 all general practitioners in the borough
will be served in this way. This is a method of working which is much more efficient as the
district nurse gets to know the relatively small number of general practitioners with whom she
is working and this saves an enormous amount of time in trying to contact the doctor when she
wants further instructions with regard to any patient. The general practitioners also find it a
much more satisfactory service for the same reason. To some it comes as a novel idea and
for them a period of assessment must be expected, but for those who are settled in this way
of working it is such a great improvement that a return to the old system of working districts,
where each nurse might have 30 or more general practitioners, is not to be contemplated.
CONTROL OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES
The outstanding event of this aspect of the work of the department during 1968 was the
introduction of measles vaccine in May; 2,056 children were given the protection during the
remainder of the year, 1,041 by family doctors and 1,015 at our own clinics.
Had the disease followed its established pattern of biennial epidemics we should have
expected an average of about 200 notifications a week during December - in fact the average
was nine and this can only have been due to the greater number of immune children in the
susceptible age groups. Research is currently being undertaken to produce a similar vaccine
against German Measles.
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