[Report 1945] / Medical Officer of Health, Cumberland County Council.
- Cumberland County Council
- Date:
- 1945
Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Credit: [Report 1945] / Medical Officer of Health, Cumberland County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.
20/92 page 14
![Perhaps I should say a word about blood transfusion. This service affects us particularly in respect of our midwifery service. Dr. Faulds has, over the years, built up at great personal labour a blood transfusion service to cover the whole area. Unhappily at the moment the fall in the numbers of blood donois—which reached a high level during the war— has since the war ended been such as to cause considerable anxiety as to the future efficient maintenance of this service. How this problem is ultimately going to be solved on a per- manent basis I do not know. It should be noted here that under the Bill the proposal is to transfer the blood transfusion service to the State. Ambulance Facilities. These remain unchanged, although a number of the ambulances employed in the area are not in the best of repair. Under the provisions of the National Health Service Bill the organisation of the ambulance service in any area will become—after the appointed da}'—the responsibility of the Local Health Authorities, in this case the County Council, and under these circumstances I cannot see an}- move in the intervening period towards the replacement of worn out ambulances, by any of the local bodies which at present maintain ambulance .services in the county. Nursing in the Home. The shortage of nurses in the countr}’ as a whole is now well realised, and it will therefore be understood that it has proved extremely difficult to maintain our own nursing and midwifery services on the one hand, and the district nursing service of the Cumberland Nursing Association— with which we are closely concerned—on the other. The position shows no sign of improvement, and the strain is perhaps chiefly felt in the midwifery section. Certain of the Maternity Units in the hospitals in the area to which we send our j^atients have, during the year, been threatened with closure on account of the complete failure to maintain a staff of midwives at a workable level. At least one private nursing home has recentlx' been under the same threat ol closure for the same reason. The result, as is noted elsewhere in the report, has been that we have had to refuse admission to hospital for confinement to man\- cases who should have been confined in hospital, chiefly through strainecl and in SOUK' cases ap])alling domestic conditions,](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b29133014_0022.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
