View report page

24
February, 1909. I have appended to this report four
photographs of the Home, kindly taken for me by my
chief clerk, Mr. J. A. Cheatle.
At the time of writing, your Public Health Committee
are considering the question of adding an
additional ward to accommodate 20 more patients.
In connection with the Dagenham Hospital is a building containing
an Equifex steam disinfector for Hospital use, while attached to
the Plaistow Fever Hospital is a large Washington.Lyons disinfector,
so arranged as to serve the purposes of a public disinfecting station
for the treatment of bedding, &c., of infectious cases occurring in the
Borough on removal to hospital or on recovery at home.
Methods of Control of Tuberculosis.—Down to the
end of 1908 no system, voluntary or compulsory, of notification of
Pulmonary Tuberculosis pertained in West Ham, and consequently
very few cases of living consumptives were brought to the knowledge
of the Public Health Department. On 1st January, 1909, The Public
Health (Tuberculosis) Regulations, 1908, issued by the Local Government
Board, came into operation, by which the notification of Phthisis
occurring in Poor Law Institutions or under the care of District
Medical Officers became compulsory.
In all cases notified a member of the Sanitary Staff visits the
home, with a view to remedying of any existing defects in the
structural surroundings of the patient, of advising him as to the
necessity of properly using the means at his disposal, of aiding him
by verbal converse and printed literature to appreciate the value to
himself and his family of the proper treatment and disposal of his
expectoration, and of teaching him the right use of disinfectants. In
every case of a recorded death from Phthisis a similar visit is paid,
disinfection of the premises advised and, in most cases, carried out.