[Report 1955] / School Medical Officer of Health, Cumberland County Council.

  • Cumberland (England). County Council.
Date:
1955
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1955] / School Medical Officer of Health, Cumberland County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    doubt at all that the steps in this direction which were taken during the decade 1925-1935, must have resulted in the saving of large numbers of growing children and young adolescents from physical deterioration. SCHOOL CLINICS During the year, the new clinic at Penrith was in building and was opened in January, 1956. Later in this year the new branch clinic in the Valley, Whitehaven, will be opened. At the planning stage are the new clinic and office buildings at Flatts Walk, Whitehaven, and the new clinic and occupation centre at Wigton. Both of these will be major improvements. What prospect there is of obtaining authority for these projects to proceed is at the moment uncertain. MANTOUX TESTING AND B.C.G. VACCINATION With the approval of the Ministry of Health, in 1955 Mantoux Testing, Mass Radiography and B.C.G. vaccination, where necessary, were offered to all school children in their fourteenth year in the county. When it is realised that there were some 2,800 children in this age group scattered over the county on the rolls of 107 schools it will be appreciated that this task involving as it did a minimum of five attendances, was no easy one. The procedure, briefly, was as follows: — A list of all children born in 1941 having been obtained from each school, an explanatory letter incorporating a form of consent was distributed through the head teacher to the parents of all children in the age group. When the com- pleted consent forms were returned a B.C.G. record card (B.C.G. 4) was prepared for all acceptances and all subse- quent information, tests and so on, were recorded on this card. The Mass Radiography Unit visited 18 centres in the county and through the co-operation of the Director of the Unit it was possible to note the result of the X-ray examina- tion on the B.C.G. card before Mantoux testing was under- taken. It is of interest that 2,228 children in this group (80%) were presented for examination by Mass X-ray. Most of the Mantoux testing and B.C.G. vaccination was carried out in the schools but wherever possible the children