[Report 1958] / Medical Officer of Health, Oxfordshire County Council.

  • Oxfordshire (England). County Council. n 81006935.
Date:
1958
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1958] / Medical Officer of Health, Oxfordshire County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    useful and it is possible that the Health Visitor’s time could more profitably be spent on selective home visiting of mothers who never bring their children to a clinic. An examination made of the weighing procedure carried out in one baby clinic in the County showed that it was very rare for the Health Visitor’s attention to be directed to improper feeding or other conditions by the weighing. Weighing was a useful diagnostic weapon for some babies only. Such an outlook may require some reorientation of Health Visitors as well as parents. The Infant Welfare Clinics did yeoman service during the year, as centres for poliomyelitis vaccination and distribution of welfare foods. One wonders, however, whether distribution of such foods might not be organised through shops. Domiciliary and Institutional Care 73.2% of babies of County residents were born in hospitals in 1958 and 26.8% in their own homes; the tendency is obviously for hospital confinement to be considered most desirable by mothers. Ihe pressure on hospital maternity beds is such that arrangements for ascertaining social need for confinement in hospital have become more than ever necessary. While many mothers prefer hospitalisation for their confinements, there are many people who consider that home is the proper place in which to be born. Contact with the family and children and the personal general practitioner is not then lost. On the other hand, specialised assistance is not so readily available, even with a Flying Squad Maternity Emergency Unit, and many general practitioners would feel happier to be able to conduct their own cases at home antenatally and in a G,P. hospital bed if hospital care is necessary. More provision for such G. P. Maternity Units is very desirable. The division of the Health Services puts barriers in the way of such progress. The domiciliary midwife is not, by law, allowed to assist the general practitioner in a hospital confinement and the general practitioners are finding that it is extremely difficult to get provision for G.P, maternity beds in hospitals. This position is indeed an indictment of the present Health Service organisat ion. During the year, the County Midwives co operated in the Perinatal Mortality Survey. This was a national investigation, aimed at research into the more obscure but persistent causes of death at the time of birth. Prevention of Accidents The National Campaign for the Prevention of Burning and Scalding Accidents was supported by the Health Committee, which made avail able for the carrying out of propaganda in the County. People find it difficult to realise that road and home accidents kill far more often than poliomyelitis or any infectious disease. Of the home accidents, burns and scalds are eminently preventable. It is sad that telling people about burns and scalds is not always successful. To see children with dis figuring burns is to believe in the great need for this kind of prevention. It is sad that most parents wait till they see their owm child burned before they believe in the merits of prevention. All fires need guards of the fixed type, whether they are coal, gas or electric. Children’s clothing which will only burn slowly is dearer than normal cloth. It needs to be specially subsidised to make it cheaper than standard cloth and it is to be hoped that it will not take as many years to effect this as it did to remove purchase tax from that other protector of the person, the motor cycle crash helmet. Road accidents killed 47 and injured 1,555 people in Oxfordshire during 1958. How many motor cyclists and car occupants would have been saved by well-known anti crash fittings, the helmet and the safety belt? A large number, if the very extensive work in the United States on Automotive Crash Research is a guide, as it undoubtedly is. Much real preventive medicine lies in the field of home and road accidents. Water Boards for Oxfordshire Towards the end of the year, progress in the formation of joint City and County Water Boards continued. The Health Committee continued to support Rural District Water and w verage Schemes, of which seven were approved, at a total cost of £317,498, during the year.