Annual report of the Medical and Sanitary Department / Sierra Leone.

  • Sierra Leone. Medical and Sanitary Department.
Date:
[1923]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual report of the Medical and Sanitary Department / Sierra Leone. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    16/140 (page 14)
    lit—HOSPITALS AND DISPENSARIES. {a) Freetown. 55. The finances of the Colony do not yet allow further buildings. On the original plan provision was made for six double ward blocks, Sisters’ quarters, Medical Officers’ quarters, offices, stores and out-patient department, as well as an European hospital block. Only three double blocks with operating theatre, and necessary outbuildings, viz. latrines, kitchen, laundry and disinfecting chamber are completed. The capacity being the same as last year, namely, eighty beds and five cots. 5G. When the finances of the Colony allow of extension, the administrative block with dispensary and out-patient department should get preference, as the present building (the old law courts) used as offices, dispensary and out-patient department, stores, etc., situated some 300 yards from the hospital, is old, dilapidated, beyond permanent repairs and totally unsuitable for the purpose. It is inconceivable from a health point of view how and why the idea of building an European hospital on this site was hatched and sanctioned ; it should be forthwith struck off the programme. 57. Since the dentist was retrenched the building originally designed as a mortuary, then used as a dentist’s surgery, is now earmarked for X-ray installation which, with electric light, is provisionally promised for 1925. 58. The total number of admissions during the year was 1,577 with 121 deaths—an increase of 295 and 1 respectively, as compared with 1922. Prevailing diseases were :— malaria, pneumonia, bronchitis, syphilis, dysentery, gonorrhoea, ulcers and local injuries. 59. The total in-patients and the maternity in-patients since 1904 are shown in the following table :— Year. Total In-patients. Maternity In-patients. Remarks. 1904 1,098 61 1905 1,358 74 1906 1,170 46 1907 1,051 60 1908 949 57 1909 1,214 97 1910 1,447 117 1911 1,481 125 1912 1,645 191 • 1913 1,465 63 1914 1,387 ? ' 1915 1,136 p 1916 1,096 109 1917 1,6.64 105 1918 1,493 p 1919 1,477 93? ' Apparently only full term cases were reported this year. 1920 602 133 ■ ' Hospital burnt—temporary hospital of one male ward , and four maternity beds. / New hospital opened—four wards in January, including 1921 737 142 -j maternity ward of eleven beds—two more wards in l August. 1922 1,282 169 1923 1,577 200 60. The annual report of the maternity ward appears in Appendix II. Native women, especially those of the Kroo tribe, will not remain in hospital for more than twenty-four hours after delivery. (It is said of the Kroo women that a certain fetish or custom must be made within twenty-four hours after the birth of a child.) Dr. Wright, the Medical Officer in charge, drew attention to this fact in his annual report for 1919 (page 11), and attributed the wide prevalence of chronic pelvic troubles amongst the women in Freetown to this cause. 61. During the year under review, the maternity ward was free from any case of ophthalmia neonatorum.