[Report 1949] / Medical Officer of Health, Radnorshire County Council.

  • Radnorshire (Wales). County Council.
Date:
1949
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1949] / Medical Officer of Health, Radnorshire County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    31/47 (page 26)
    Prevention of Illness, Care and After-Care. The wording of Section 28 of the National Health Service Act is so wide that all the work of a Health Depart- ment might very well be included within it. Nevertheless the duties of the Local Health Authority which fall within this section are very limited, and concern mainly the after-care of tuberculous parsons discharged from sanatoria and hospitals, and also the after-care of patients discharged from mental hospitals and mental deficiency institutions. The after-care of patients who have baen dealt with under the Lunacy and Mental Deficiency Acts will be dealt with in the section of the report dealing with duties under Section 51 of the Act. The community care of tuberculous patients living in their own homas is a duty which, in spite of the fall in the number of cases of tuberculosis, has been increasing during the last few years. The reason for this is that hospital boards have found it difficult to recruit Nurses to staff sana- toria, which appears to be a relatively unattractive branch of nursing, and hence more tuberculous patients have had to be nursed at home than formerly. A further comment might be made, and that is that the outlook of the Regional Hospital Boards in regard to tuber- culosis is somewhat different from that of a local health authority. The Regional Hospital Boards regard tubercu- losis as a disease which needs treatment and therefore gives priority, in admitting cases to sanatoria, to those who are likely to be cured. A Local Health Authority would agree that such patients need priority of treatment, but equally would also give priority of admission to those patients who are in a highly infectious state and are a source of danger to others. So a Medical Officer of Health, if he had sanatorium beds at his disposal, would give priority of admission equally to curable patients and to those infectious cases who had young children living with them.