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Telephone: PUBLIC HEALTH DEPARTMENT,
TEDdington Lock 2223-4 ELMFIELD HOUSE,
TEDdington Lock 4411-5 HIGH STREET,
TEDDINGTON.
To the UayoTj Aldermen and Councillors of the Borough of Twickenham.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,
I have the honour to present the Annual Report on the work of
the Health Department; the statistical tables refer to the calendar
year 1961.
The supplementary personal health services, and the social
and preventive medical work of the health authorities has recently
been considered in the Ten Year Plan. We have just had published a
report of an independent committee of all branches of the medical
service under the chairmanship of Sir Arthur Porritt. Both of these
reviews have shown very clearly a serious defect in the health
services of this country, which medical officers of health have
bitterly complained about ever since 1948. This defect is a fundamental
one; it is the division of the service into three separate compartments,
It leads to untold administrative difficulties; often misunderstandings,
irritations and jealousies between the various staffs; inability to woi
together as a team for the benefit of patients; and a consequent
unnecessary increase in cost which has never been determined. The
Porritt committee's proposal for dealing with this difficulty is
a bold one. They would like to see the service reorganised under
Area Health Boards under which all doctors, nurses and other staffs
of executive councils, hospitals, and local authority health
departments would be employed. It is said that this arrangement
would simplify the administration of the service and have a profound
effect on forward planning which hitherto has been hesitant and
piece meal.
Here in Twickenham in the district council, we are concerned with
only a fragment of the health services administered in our area. The
Borough staff of all grades numbers 15, whereas the County staff for
Area 10 numbers 430. Members of Twickenham Council have little
opportunity for hearing anything about the clinics, the health
visiting, nursing, and midwifery service, and the many ancillary
and supplementary medical services of all sorts which are undertaken
by the local health authority to strengthen and augment the practitioK
and hospital services. It is not surprising that many of these
activities are overlooked in the Borough Council's deliberations. It
is certainly high time these services were brought together as in the
new London proposals, and still better if we could be integrated
in some way with the hospitals and practitioners.
This is my twenty-fourth Annual Report since I came to
Twickenham, It is written by statutory authority under Regulation 15
made under Section 108 of the Local Government Act, 1933. These
Regulations are "The Public Health Officers Regulations, 1959 ".
Regulation 15 states
"A medical officer; of health shall, in respect of the
district for which he is appointed -
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