Health in the Factories
War compels the State to look into many social defects which, injurious and wasteful in time of peace, are seen to be intolerable in time of war. One of these is the loss of man-hours of labour in factories through preventable ill-health. A deputation from the Council of the British Medical Association saw the Minister of Labour last week and presented him with a report on the means of reducing illness and accidents in factories It pointed out that industry loses 31,500,000 weeks' work in a year through ordinary ill-health among the workers, largely colds, influenza and gastric conditions, and that accidents cause a loss estimated at £3o,000,000. It believes that this could be greatly reduced if every factory, large and small, employed a whole or part-time medical, officer to supervise health at the place of employment and co-operate with the employees' own doctors. Much of the work undertaken by such officers would be preventive, not merely treating diseases and accidents but warding them off. It may be objected that under present conditions it will be difficult to find the medical personnel. But if the experiment proved a success it would reduce ill-health and so relieve the ordinary practitioners.
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