[Report 1966] / Medical Officer of Health, Oxford City.

  • Oxford (England). City Council. no2012034102.
Date:
1966
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1966] / Medical Officer of Health, Oxford City. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    There have been no worrying reactions. At the time of writing this Report, about 50 per cent of those eligible have received vaccine and there can be little doubt that the expected measles outbreak, which started at the beginning of 1967, failed to develop and soon faded out altogether. Short¬ term protection from measles vaccination is obviously very good. The very few cases of measles which have, so far, occurred amongst vaccinated children have mostly been very mild. The General Practitioner Maternity Unit at the Churchill Hospital opened in August. Patients are looked after by their general practitioners and attached domiciliary midwives. All the domiciliary midwives hold honorary contracts with the Board of Governors of the United Oxford Hospitals. The Management Committee of the Maternity Unit is repre¬ sentative of all three branches of the Health Service. The opening of the G.P. Maternity Unit, which is fully booked from January, 1967, onwards, resulted in a small increase in the total number of deliveries undertaken by the domiciliary midwives. There was a welcome decrease in the number of early discharges from hospital, but the planned scheme is still not working smoothly and further discussions have taken place at both the Maternity Liaison and Local Medical Committees to try to bring about improved co-operation. Patients are booking earlier in pregnancy; only 5.3 per cent of those booking for home delivery did so after the 24th week of pregnancy compared with 23.2 per cent in 1963. No local authority antenatal clinics have been held since the end of 1965, the responsibility of this work having been taken over completely by general practitioners, the majority of whom now run their own practice antenatal clinic with an attached midwife or her pupil in attendance. The importance of routine haemoglobin estima¬ tions both in pregnancy and in the puerperium is emphasised; the mid¬ wives now take the necessary specimens. There is an increasingly close relationship with the local Family Planning Association and the newly-appointed Regional Secretary of the Association has been housed, at least temporality, within the Health Department. Weekly family planning clinics are now being held in three local authority clinic premises. The domiciliary service introduced in September, 1965, has continued to be most successful and this appears to be the most effective way of controlling the size of problem families in the future. 32 child welfare clinics are now held each week, of which 13 are taken by general practitioners for their own practice patients. Quarterly staff meetings for all doctors taking part in these clinics have been inaugurated. A new clinic was started in the West Oxford Community Centre towards the end of the year to replace the St. Ebbe’s Clinic. An additional clinic