[Report 1945] / Medical Officer of Health, Cambridgeshire County Council.

  • Cambridgeshire (England). County Council
Date:
1945
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1945] / Medical Officer of Health, Cambridgeshire County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    16/20 (page 12)
    The difliculty of obtaining vacancies can hardly be overstressed, partic- ularly where low grade cases are concerned. There were fifteen urgent low grade cases on the Council’s waiting list at the end of 1945 in spite of the fact that two oases where the position was*extreme had been certified as persons of unsound mind, and admitted to the County Mental Hospital, a very undesirable procedure only justilied by over- whelming stress of eircumstanees. VENEREAL DISEASES The following figures include all the eases coming to the Clinic at Addenbrooke’s Hospital during 1945 from all the areas served by it and include both civil and military cases :— Male Female Total Under treatment on .lanuary 1st, 1945 48 50 98 Old cases re-admitted .. i 8 15 “ First-time ” patients during 1945 183 186 369 Total under treatment (including trans . fers from other clinics) 268 251 519 Left without completing treatment 11 14 25 Completed treatment but not final tests 23 10 33 Transferred to other Treatment Centres 35 13 48 LTnder treatment at end of year 56 53 109 Out-patient attendances : (a) On Clinic days 1,266 1,416 2,682 (b) On intermediate days 1.479 65 1,544 Aggregate “ In-patient days ” 62 230 292 There has been a fall in the number of new cases of 92 as compared with the figure for the previous year, and the fall is evenly distributed between the two sexes. It may be remembered that 1944 was the first year in which the number of new female patients had equalled the number of new male patients, but that position has continued in 1945 (actually there were three more female patients as compared with male patients). The number of new service cases was 42 of which the surprisingly large nund^er of 35 were found to be suffering from non- venereal conditions. Altogether (service and civilian patients) there w‘ere 280 patients who were found not to be suffering from a venereal condition, a number only ten less than that of the previous year and 17 less than that of 1943 ^\hen it was by far the highest on record. In contrast to the figuies for the previous year, however, the number of women found not to ■)e suffering from a venereal disease was not substantially greater t lan the number of men in a like ])osition. This does not necessarilv mean that the large number of such cases in both sexes is not due to contact tracing as was suggested in the previous year, but it does make It more probable that it is due to a disposition to seek treatment where tiic jiossibihty of infection is suspected. considering Cambridgeshire cases only, it is found that there uere -.8 new patients compared with 217 in the previous year, com-