A health service for the nation
1943-03-27 1943 1940s 8 pages The attendance of babies and toddlers at Welfare Centres, ante-natal and post-natal sessions have all in turn been accepted and welcomed. The Annual Report of the Chief Medical Officer of the Ministry of Health for 1938, states that 60% of expectant mothers attended ant...
| Institution: | MCR - The Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick |
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| Language: | English English |
| Published: |
London : published by the Women Public Health Officers' Association
27 March 1943
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10796/B09B04CE-4094-4E1C-A03A-8FADDD56951F http://hdl.handle.net/10796/0AB9FB86-9803-46E9-B306-5F24043688B0 |
| Summary: | 1943-03-27
1943
1940s
8 pages
The attendance of babies and toddlers at Welfare Centres, ante-natal and post-natal sessions have all in turn been accepted and welcomed. The Annual Report of the Chief Medical Officer of the Ministry of Health for 1938, states that 60% of expectant mothers attended ante-natal clinics. While it is true that the provision of free or cheap milk only through Maternity and Child Welfare Centres — prior to the wartime National Milk Scheme — was an added inducement to some mothers to attend Welfare Centres, this country is unique in having made attendance at these Centres genuinely popular among the great majority of the nation's mothers — a popularity not dependent on the association of such attendance with any insurance or other material benefit. 11. Similarly, for any new preventive services to be provided in a new National Health Service to be fully utilised and appreciated, it will be necessary to popularise them by similar methods, i.e., by inviting people to make use of them and explaining how, when and where the sessions are held, by ensuring that a personal welcome is given at the Health Centre and that the medical advice given is understood, and, finally, by visiting in the home to see that the advice is being followed. The recent appeal made to Health Visitors by the Ministry of Health to popularise immunisation against diphtheria illustrates this point. 12. As an Association of women Public Health Officers, we believe therefore that the future of the National Health Service should be two-fold :— A. Environmental, preventive and educational. B. Curative. We suggest that both these branches should be administered by one Regional Medical Officer of Health. 13. We submit the following suggestions for :— (a) Conserving our existing Public Health Services, e.g, Maternity and Child Welfare, School Medical and Tuberculosis services, (b) Making available to all members of the community the services of salaried general practitioners, who, we suggest, should be known as Home Doctors, and (c) Co-ordinating these services with each other as part of the two branches of the National Health Service of the future. 14. We attach great importance to keeping clear this dual function of the new National Health Service, both from the administrative and psychological point of view. We believe that it is important that the public shall grow increasingly "health conscious" looking to the Health Centre and to Health Visitors to teach them how to keep well, rather than assuming that ill-health is normal and frequent medical treatment necessary. Three
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| Physical Description: | TEXT |