[Report 1948] / School Medical Officer of Health, Cumberland County Council.

  • Cumberland (England). County Council.
Date:
1948
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1948] / School Medical Officer of Health, Cumberland County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    County Health Department, 11, Portland Square, Carlisle. June, 1949. To the Chairman and Members of the Education Committee. Mr. Chairman, My Lord, Ladies and Gentlemen, I beg to present the Annual Report on the Medical Inspection and Treatment of School Children for the year ended 31st December, 1948. STATISTICS The statistical returns of the work undertaken are set out in the appropriate parts of the Report. These tables call for little comment, except, perhaps, in two respects. The first is that there is a substantial fall in the number of cases found to be unclean at school. Last year there was a rather disturbing rise in this connection, which seems only to have been a passing phase. The second point is the rather striking gap between the number of children with eye defects referred for treatment, and the number of children for whom glasses are known to have been supplied. The relative figures are 1,666 and 470. The answer, of course, lies in the fact that many more glasses may have been supplied, but the information has not reached us. As an Education Authority we have, in fact, no really reliable source of information in this matter, which is an unsatisfactory position. This has a con- siderable bearing on what is said later. On the subject of the provision of glasses for school children it may be worth saying that, in common with other sections of the community, school children for whom glasses are prescribed have at present to wait long periods before the glasses are actually provided. We receive many complaints about this, perhaps parti- cularly in the case of older children who are studying for examinations and who may have broken their glasses, or who may require a change of glasses. There is nothing, of course, that we can do about it.