[Report 1939] / Medical Officer of Health, Westmorland County Council.

  • Westmorland (England). County Council
Date:
1939
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1939] / Medical Officer of Health, Westmorland County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    21/62 (page 17)
    might be considerable opposition from parents, but the re¬ sult has proved the contrary and the acceptances have been much higher than was expected. The considerable task of immunising the children all over the county is not yet complete, and therefore exact figures are not available. 4,177 acceptances were received for all children, pre-school and school, excluding Kendal, and so far 2,476 treatments have been completed. In some areas the local doctors have generously assisted in the task of immunising in order to expedite the work. Teachers, nurses and local doctors have all given splendid support to the scheme, and it is hoped that the reward will be the absence from the county of the most fatal disease of childhood, School Nursing. The advent of the evacuees has made this a heavy task in some areas, and in order to cope with it it has been neces¬ sary to open temporary school inspection clinics where minor ailments and unclean heads could be treated. Volunteers from the Civil Nursing Reserve and from the St. John Ambulance and the Red Cross Society have stood by the nurses in running these clinics and have helped with the general nursing. This extra work for the evacua¬ tion undertaken by the nurses and their helpers has been a real war service and the results have been excellent. There is one more war emergency service undertaken by some of the district nurses that deserves mention and en¬ couragement, and that is the 50 hours’ training in practical home nursing of volunteers for the Civil Nursing Reserve. This has been completed for several volunteers in various districts, and these Nursing Auxiliaries are now registered for National Service, and their help to the nurses may yet be invaluable should further evacuation take place. It would be a wise precaution to have at least one voluntary Nursing Auxiliary in every district who could be called upon to help if the course of the war should throw a further strain on our already hard-worked district nurses. %