Emancipation Act of 1862 freeing all enslaved persons in the District of Columbia. Over 40,000 escaped slaves sought refuge and freedom in Washington, D.C. during the war and whose staff, including nurses and surgeons, were largely African American. Known as Contraband Camp, it contained one of the few hospitals that treated blacks in Washington, D.C. bounded by 12th, 13th, R and S Streets N.W., a tented camp and hospital once stood that served thousands of escaped slaves and black soldiers during the American Civil War. On a parcel of swampy land in northwest Washington, D.C. The Contraband Hospital as it was called, eventually became the Howard University Hospital in 1975. Newmark, exhibition specialist in the History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, describes thefirst hospital sponsored by the United States government specifically to meet the health care needs of the ex-slaves during the Civil War. The service was a loose alliance of separate organisations, working together to deal with a national emergency, but paved the way for separate and competing institutions to come together as part of the National Health Service.In the article below Jill L. However, in practice, it had to refrain from doing so, given the strong independence and competition between the voluntary hospitals. The Ministry of Health technically had broad powers to issue direction to hospitals. Paving the way for a National Health Service There was considerable opposition to reopening beds among voluntary hospitals, but public pressure and negotiations on doctors' remuneration contributed to the reorganisation of services. Reopening routine beds required a redistribution of staff and resources. The Ministry of Health had been paying for beds to remain empty in London. It took some months of negotiation before the government managed to convince the voluntary hospitals, in particular, to reallocate beds for routine cases. Initially, this balance was not ideal, and the routine sick suffered through being denied hospital treatment. One of the challenges for the service was to deal with the routine needs of a 'normal' population of sick people, while freeing up capacity to deal with war-related casualties. establish an emergency public health laboratory service, and expand and improve existing pathological laboratories.organise an information service to collect and circulate information on admissions, bed numbers and deaths.organise a centrally directed transport service.establish protective measures at hospitals, such as building shelters.Developing a hospital serviceĪs part of the process of developing a hospital service, the ministry needed to: The 300,000 figure was significant but fell short of some of the earlier calculations that, by the fourth week of war, the total number of air raid casualties could reach 430,000. In April 1939, it was decided that the maximum number of beds that could be released to support air raid casualties would be 300,000. The surveys highlighted widespread variation in standards and quality. The ministry lacked basic information on bed numbers, staffing, conditions and so on. The Ministry of Health conducted surveys and inspections to try to understand the quantity of beds and quality of hospital provision nationally. For the first time, staff moved freely between the two different types of hospital, transferring knowledge and experience. All were subject to regulation around issues such as planning and manpower direction. The aim was to link casualty hospitals in danger areas to each other and to hospitals in outer areas.Ĭounty hospitals and large mental health hospitals, in particular, were taken over and new, temporary, hutted hospitals were built. Preparations for the service were stepped up during 1938–39.įrom June 1938, the Ministry of Health appointed regional hospital officers, supported by county and county borough medical officers of health to organise hospital services on a regional basis. The requirement to provide hospital care for civilian casualties of air raids led to the creation of the emergency hospital service. The Emergency Hospital Service (later Emergency Medical Service) was established at the outbreak of World War II in 1939, giving central government a right of direction over voluntary and municipal hospitals.
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