[Report 1961] / School Medical Officer of Health, Nottingham City.

  • Nottingham City Council
Date:
1961
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1961] / School Medical Officer of Health, Nottingham City. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    SCHOOL HEALTH SERVICE REPORT FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31st DECEMBER, 1961 BY THE PRINCIPAL SCHOOL MEDICAL OFFICER, DR. R. G. SPRENGER T o the Chairman and Members of the City of Nottingham Education Committee Ladies and Gentlemen, I have the honour to present this report, the 53rd, on the work of your service. In these opening remarks, it is usual to comment on the general trends of the work because it is rare that there is anything striking in the way of happenings to report. The routine work goes on from day to day with little apparent change but, to those of us who can look back to the days well before the last war, there are many comparisons of especial interest. In those days there was no immunisation programme. There were no school meals and arrangements for milk were sketchy and on a voluntary basis only, when malnutrition was really marked, and although malnutrition was much commoner than it is to-day, it was not a common condition. Still about fifteen in every hundred children seen during 1961 at the medical examination on first starting school were found to have defects that required treatment; often parents had not realised the defect, and so had not gone for treatment through the usual National Health Service channels. Facilities for treatment are adequate and it is rare for us to find any difficulty over making necessary arrangements, and rarer still for us to find anything but complete co-operation from the homes except occa¬ sionally with older boys. In the “Health of the School Child—1958 and 1959” (the latest report of the Chief Medical Officer of the Ministry of Education) there is given a number of tables in the appendix. These refer to defects found at medical inspections in the various County and County Borough areas. Naturally we cannot help but compare the findings in one’s own area with those in others of equivalent standing or in contiguous areas and wonder why at times there should be such considerable differences in the findings. It has to be borne in mind, of course, that like the policeman who finds the largest number of traffic offences, it does not necessarily mean that large numbers mean efficient work.
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