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

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

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

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

    14/36 (page 8)
    In the rural part of the county the midwives and health visitors fntendfnt of N^ and Health Visitors. The district nursing associa- tions remained in being, however, to gn'e local oversight to the work and to advise the Council as to any modifications which might be necessary in each area. Apart from what has been said above the actual services provided remained very much as they were before the National Health Service \ct came into force. In the paragraphs which follow an account will be given of them for the rural part of the county for the year as a who e, with such indications of differences between the first half and tl second half of the year as may be necessary, and finally some account will be submitted of the work in the Borough of Cambridge in the second half of the year. In 1948 notification of intention to practise in the rural area was received from 48 midwives, the total number known to be practising at the end of the year being 41. Midwives attended 554 confinements during the year acting as midwives onlv in 305 cases and as maternity nurses under medical direction in 249. They found it necessary to summon medical aid in 118 of the cases in which they acted as midwives only. The correspon- iiuT fitrures for the period after July 5th were 151 confinements attended as^iidwives only and 119 as maternity nurses, and the number of the former type of case to which medical aid was summoned was 51. At the end of the year there were 23 midwives qualified to adminis- ter gas and air analgesia as against 9 at the end of the previous year. Training of the remainder proceeded during 1949 and at the time ot writing all of the midwives regularly employed by the County Council in the rural area arc qualified except one part time midwife who acts only as a maternity nurse. The number of cases in which the method was used was 223 as against 144 in the pre\'ious y^ear. The total number of births actually notified from the rural area during 1948 was 549 including 11 still births. To these must be added the births to women normally resident in the rural area which took place outside it, principally births in institutions. The total figure then becomes 1,408 of which 23 were still births which may be compared with the figure of 1,448 registered births (live and still) on which the calcula- tion of the statistics at the beginning of this report is based. The number of women examined ante-natally by' general practi- tioners under the Council’s scheme was 352 while the number examined ])ost-natally was 178. Both these figures show slight increases over those of the previous year.