Year book : 1966 / Public Health Laboratory Service.

  • Great Britain. Public Health Laboratory Service
Date:
1966
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: Year book : 1966 / Public Health Laboratory Service. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    practitioners are welcomed at all times in the laboratories for the purpose of consultation. (b) ‘‘Sanitary’’ specimens: these are received from medical officers of health, public health inspectors, and others concermed officially with the control of the public health. They comprise specimens for bacteriological examination of water, shell-fish, watercress, sewage, milk and cream; of processed foods such as ice-cream, artificial cream and canned foods; and of imported products such as the various forms of meat, fish, processed egg, coconut and fertiliser. The Service normally examines only material offered to the consumer, but will, of course, examine specimens taken at any stage of pro- duction or distribution by medical officers of health investigating suspected food-borne infections. The Service is ready to give free advice to food manufacturers and processors to assist them in the production and distribution of bacteriologically safe products. For routine control of such products, commercial firms are charged a fee, but work of this sort is undertaken only exceptionally. Brief mention has already been made of the reference laboratones and specialist departments. These provide facilities for the exact identification and ‘‘finger-printing’’ of organisms belonging to many different groups. This is sometimes required by clinicians in their treatment of patients, but more often for epidemiological purposes. The reference laboratories are open freely for use by any laboratory within or without the Service. In addition, a number of reference experts are retained for the examination of occasional specimens which require special skill, special knowledge, or special reagents. The epidemiological work of the Service includes not only the investi- gation of outbreaks of infectious disease, in co-operation with local medical officers of health, but also studies of the distribution and behaviour of infectious agents throughout England and Wales, and of the various aspects of. the immunisation programme. Epidemiological information is collected centrally week by week from public health and hospital laboratories all over the country, including Scotland, Northern Ireland and Eire and then made available to each of these laboratories in return in the form of a confidential weekly summary. Field investigations of infectious disease, and field trials of protective agents, including vaccines, are frequently carried out. All laboratories are engaged to some extent in research in aadition to routine work. A special feature of the Service is the investigation of various problems by Working Parties containing a dozen or more members drawn from labor- atories in different parts of the country. Some of the problems investigated are of direct concern to Government Departments, with which close working relations have always existed. In addition to normal public health work, an increasing number of laboratories of the Service are undertaking responsibility for clinical bacteriology at hospitals. Arrangements of this kind, involving the association of a public health laboratory with the pathological laboratory of a hospital,