Annual report : 1948/49 / Wigan and Leigh Hospital Management Committee.

  • Wigan and Leigh Hospital Management Committee.
Date:
1949
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual report : 1948/49 / Wigan and Leigh Hospital Management Committee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of beds at this hospital has been allocated to general surgery and are in use by patients from the Wigan Infirmary waiting list. A certain number of beds have also been allocated for general medical cases under specialist supervision. This arrangement is proving very successful, and has enabled many patients to receive earlier treatment. 47. It is also appropriate to mention here the Committee’s plan for extending the services provided at Firs Maternity Home, Leigh, which mainly serves the districts of Leigh, Tyldesley and Atherton. The Home has until now functioned as a lying-in hospital only, those pateints suffering from abnormal conditions being transferred to hospitals in and around Manchester. A complete obstetrical service is about to commence at this hospital, and the Committee is seeking to establish with the Board the need for a 50-bedded maternity hospital to serve the requirements of the Leigh area. If this need is established, it will proceed with a scheme for enlarging the existing hospital buildings. 48. Pemberton hospital is not scheduled for major development, as the site and buildings are so unsatisfactory. A scheme for making the verandah and the ward proof against inclement weather which will enable eight additional patients to be accommodated all the year round has been prepared by the Committee and placed before the Board for inclusion as part of the scheme of works to be carried out during the next financial year, and it is hoped that the scheme will receive the Board’s approval in view of the acute shortage of hospital beds for tuberculous patients. 49. As has been previously mentioned, a proposal to make beds at Astley Hospital available for tuberculous patients is now under consideration. 50. One of the wards at Whelley Hospital is now being used for treating patients suffering from pneumonia and similar conditions. This arrangement has the effect of relieving the pressure on emergency beds at Wigan Infirmary and will thus help in reducing the waiting lists of medical cases. In the event of an epidemic of any infectious diseases of the notifiable kind, the full number of beds could be made available for such patients at very short notice. Mental Patients. 51. Patients suffering from mental conditions are accommodated at two of the Group’s hospitals, namely, Atherleigh and Billinge. At neither of these hospitals are there facilities for curative treatment of mental conditions, the services provided being more or less a continuance of those for which the former Poor Law Authorities were lately responsible. The existence of such accommodation is made necessary by the nation-wide shortage of beds for mental patients and it is somewhat disappointing to note from the Annual Report published by the Board of Control that overcrowding in mental hospitals has increased during the period January, 1948 to January, 1949 from 11.7% to 12.2%, and according to the report there seems little prospect of great strides forward with any building programmes. Only 105 new beds were added during that year, bringing the total accommodation for this class of patient to 144,725. The Committee is anxious, however, to do what it can to make life more interesting for these unfortunate patients and has appointed a trained