The Health Services
1944-05 1944 1940s 23 pages 7 (c) The Emergency Hospital Service. This was set up by the Ministry of Health in 1939 in order to provide for air raid casualties. For the first time both types of hospitals were combined into one system comprising eighty per cent. of the existing hospitals. The count...
| Institution: | MCR - The Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick |
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| Language: | English English |
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London : C. W. Publishing Ltd.
May 1944
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10796/ACDA3E61-8761-4FEE-9CFA-38B7A0F4B2C5 http://hdl.handle.net/10796/A0F18426-6EE1-4671-85E0-D68004428E3F |
| Summary: | 1944-05
1944
1940s
23 pages
7 (c) The Emergency Hospital Service. This was set up by the Ministry of Health in 1939 in order to provide for air raid casualties. For the first time both types of hospitals were combined into one system comprising eighty per cent. of the existing hospitals. The country was divided into large regions and the hospitals in each region were grouped in such a manner that their work could be co-ordinated. A patient could be sent to the hospital most suited to his case instead of going to the nearest hospital available. This pooling of hospital resources, which was accompanied by the "upgrading" of many public assistance institutions, mental hospitals, etc., the extension of others and the building of several large new hospitals in Scotland, has much improved the hospital service as a whole. Many special treatment centres, a national laboratory service and a comprehensive fracture and rehabilitation service have been established. The service has been made available, not only to emergency patients, but to certain other groups of civilians, and is being used on an increasing scale for war workers. (2) Clinics, etc., for Tuberculosis and Venereal Disease. All local authorities are obliged to provide free facilities for the diagnosis and treatment of these diseases, but not everywhere are the services of an equally high standard. Originally National Health Insurance included treatment for tuberculosis, but it was soon found that a service comprising the whole population, independent of insurance status, was needed. In 1912 pulmonary tuberculosis and in 1914 all forms of tuberculosis were made notifiable. The Public Health (Tuberculosis) Act, 1921, made local authorities responsible for the treatment and care of persons suffering from tuberculosis by provision of dispensaries, sanatoria and other institutions. Most hospitals and sanatoria for tuberculous patients are provided by local authorities, but they are by no means enough to satisfy the demand and there is a serious shortage of tuberculosis nurses. Mass radiography for the detection of tuberculosis is now being introduced, but at the moment only a limited number of sets is available. All these provisions, however, only attend to the medical needs of the patients and not to the economic needs of their families. Treatment is often postponed to avoid loss of earnings until the disease has become incurable. In 1943 a scheme of maintenance allowances for curable patients suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis was introduced and somewhat improved the situation, but as it is limited to one type of tuberculosis and excludes chronic cases, it only offers a partial solution. As a result of the serious increase in venereal disease during the last war, the Public Health (Venereal Diseases) Regulations, 1916, and the Venereal Disease Act, 1917, made it the duty of local authorises to provide free treatment for venereal disease patients. Clinics are now in existence in all areas.
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| Physical Description: | TEXT |