[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Battersea Borough.

  • Battersea (London, England). Metropolitan Borough.
Date:
[1955]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: [Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Battersea Borough. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    11/56 (page 7)
    7 I should like to say a word about some of the work we are doing in this area. First, to deal with the question of teaching. We have been fortunate in forming an arrangement with London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, whereby a number of lectures on Public health administration is given, and thereafter, students of the School, who are medical men and women studying for the University of London Post Graduate Diploma in Health, come to our Departments to study methods of public health administration in this country. During the Spring and Summer terms, for one session per week, we receive about twelve students from the School. Dealing as we do with both the environmental and personal health services, we are able to give to the students what we hope is a wide, all-embracing and at the same time well balanced exposition of public health work in this country. Over the past three years, some seventy students from many parts of the World and Commonwealth have passed through our Departments. We hope they will carry back with them to the many countries whence they came, useful ideas of what we have been able to show them. Turning to the problem of research, there are many questions in Public health and preventive medicine which need investigation. One of them is to decide whether three injections of a combined diphtheria/ whooping cough preventative is as effective in the prevention of diphtheria and whooping cough as injections against the two diseases given separately. The advantages of the combined method is that the child has to have only three injections instead of five. Research of this kind is an expensive and prolonged procedure, and unless special staff and facilities are available, it is rarely that a reliable answer can be provided. We are fortunate in being able to participate, in an investi gation of this kind, in conjunction with the staff of the Medical Research Council. A special team of nursing and clerical staff is available to us; the giving of the injections being the responsibility of the personal health services. The investigation is helped considerably by the parti cipation of the Borough Health Department, since we are able to utilise such services as transport for taking specimens quickly to the laboratory, and the ready access of certain records is also very useful, My senior medical colleagues and I supervise the work of the team in the field, while at the same time, we work in close conjunction with the medical staff of the Medical Research Council and the local general practitioners,and we hope that in the course of a year or two we can give an answer to this very important question. I would not wish to end this introduction to my Report for 1954 without saying something about Mr. F. H. Chuter, recently Chief Sanitary Inspector for Battersea, who retired in November. Mr. Chuter, whose father, incidentally, was Food Inspector in Battersea for many years, Joined the Battersea Health Department in 1926 as a Sanitary Inspector. In 1935 he became Senior Sanitary Inspector, and was designated Chief Sanitary Inspector in 1946. In 1948 were added the duties of Principal Administrative Assistant. He had many years of service with the Council, during which time he gave loyal and most efficient service to the Health Department. His resignation, on the ground of ill-health, was regretted by everybody. My own personal dept to Mr, Chuter is a considerable one, for when I took up my appointment he placed his knowledge of public health work in general, and his knowledge of Battersea, in particular, at my disposal, and I was