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Hospitals.
All the hospitals in the district are now administered by the SouthWest
Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board.
The isolation hospital facilities which previously were controlled
by the local sanitary authorites through their Joint Board played
a predominant part in the control of infectious disease. The authority
which the Medical Officer of Health had to admit cases to such hospitals
was one of his chief weapons in this field of preventive medicine. Its
loss is a handicap which should not have been imposed upon him.
He now finds that the local bed accommodation for this type of illness
has been seriously reduced, that some other authority decides whether
a case of infectious disease shall be admitted or not, and that such
cases have, on an increasing scale, to be conveyed greater distances to
the nearest available bed with greater prejudice to recovery. The
transmission of information as to admissions and discharges of patients
now takes much longer than in the days when we had daily telephone
contact with the Joint Board's own local fever hospital where, almost
without exception, all infectious cases could be accommodated. This
is a significant disadvantage when it is remembered that time is of the
essence of infectious disease control.
Table 9 shows the cases admitted to isolation hospital during the
year.
Vaccination and Immunisation.
The Council agreed with the County Council that their Medical
Officer of Health should continue to direct the arrangements in the
district for diphtheria immunisation and for vaccination against
smallpox, the provision of which services was a function placed upon
the County Council by Section 26 of the National Health Service Act,
1946. Details of the operations of these schemes are given in Section F
of this Report dealing with infectious disease.
Byelaws.
In November the Council approved " Byelaws as to the handling,
wrapping and delivery of food and sale of food in the open air " and
in December " Byelaws as to the business of hairdresser or barber."
Both received ministerial confirmation in January, 1950.
Clinics and Treatment Centres.
The following programme of clinics is provided by the County
Council and the Hospital Board and are available to residents of the
district.
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