The Fountain Hospital

The following statement on the plan to use Queen Mary's Hospital, Carshalton, Surrey, for children who are mentally handicapped as well as those suffering from physical illness, has been sent to us for publication. We are glad to give it publicity and to assure members of the Hospital Management Committee that the N.A.M.H. will watch future developments with deep interest.?Ed. The Minister of Health has decided that both the Fountain and Queen Mary's Hospital Management Committees are to be disbanded and that a new Committee will be appointed in October of this year to administer all the six units in the Fountain Group and Queen Mary's Hospital, Carshalton. At the meeting of the Fountain Committee today when this decision was received the Committee were concerned that the following points should be adequately dealt with : (1) That immediate plans should be made for the proper rehousing of all the 600 severely subnormal patients in the Fountain Hospital and the further 150 patients on the waiting list. (2) Research and teaching activities already carried out at the Fountain Hospital should be continued and developed with adequate facilities. (3) That there should be more than 100 beds in the new hospital which the Minister proposes to build on the present site of the Fountain Hospital in Tooting. Built in eight weeks as a temporary fever hospital and intended to last ten years the Fountain Hospital is now 66 years old and the structure and services are in a very bad state, and the wards are seriously overcrowded. New accommodation is urgently required. The Minister proposes to move 120 patients to Carshalton in the first instance, but unless a far larger number are sent to Carshalton, the Minister's proposal of a new unit at Tooting with a maximum of 100 beds will be totally inadequate and will not solve the Fountain's problem.