[Report 1942] / TB Officer, Lancashire County Council.

  • Lancashire (England). County Council.
Date:
1942
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1942] / TB Officer, Lancashire County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    LANCASHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL. REPORT OF THE CENTRAL TUBERCULOSIS OFFICER FOR THE YEAR 1942. Introduction. I beg to present the twenty-ninth annual report on the prevention and treatment of tuberculosis in the Administrative County of Lancaster for the year 1942. This review of the work is, of necessity, much abbreviated compared with the reports presented before the war. Under the Lancashire scheme, the Administrative County is divided into five large areas, average population 327,000, and three small areas. Each large area is in the charge of a team consisting of consultant tuberculosis officer, one or more assistant tuberculosis officers, four to seven tuberculosis health visitors, and clerical staff of two. In each of these areas there is a chief dispensary, two or more branch dispensaries and a sanatorium-hospital containing up to 70 beds for the treatment and isolation of patients near their homes ; the consultant tuberculosis officer of the dispensary area acts as the visiting medical superintendent of the sanatorium-hospital. The three small dispensary areas are in the charge respectively of the medical superintendent of the High Carley Sanatorium (133 beds), the Elswick Sanatorium (76 beds) and the Wrightington Hospital (352 beds). These small areas are each equipped with one dispensary, and have one, or two, tuberculosis health visitors ; the X-ray and clerical work is done at the institution. The small area and the institu¬ tion is in each case controlled as before by a team. All our senior or consultant tuberculosis officers thus have institu¬ tional beds like consultants in other branches of medicine, and I lay great stress on this combination of the hospital, dispensary and domi¬ ciliary sides of the work because it enables the problem of the prevention and treatment of tuberculosis to be seen whole. As will be seen in the following section (page 3) on incidence and mortality, the number of new pulmonary cases notified in 1942 is the highest since 1933. There has been a gradual rise since 1938. For non-pulmonary tuberculosis the figures are more irregular, but the last three years show a gradual increase.