[Report 1955] / Medical Officer of Health, West Sussex County Council.

  • West Sussex (England). County Council.
Date:
1955
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1955] / Medical Officer of Health, West Sussex County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    5/56 (page 1)
    Annual Report of the County Medical Officer for the year 1955 FOREWORD To the Chairman and Members of the Health Committee of the West Sussex County Council. I have the honour to present my Annual Report for the year 1955* The health of the population of the County, as judged by statistics and reports, was generally satisfactory. Information regardirg all the work carried out under the various health schemes for which the County Council is responsible will be found in the appropriate sections in the body of the Report. It will be noted that the population of the County continued to increase, and that the Registrar General estimated that at mid-year it was 347,700. Contrary to the previous year, the number of deaths in the County in 1955 exceeded the number of births by 15. This was due to the excess of births over deaths in the rural districts being more than offsets by the contra position in the urban areas. Of special significance was the birth rate in Horsham Rural District, of which Crawley is a part, which reached the very high level of 20.8 whereas the death rate was only 7.5 As pointed out in my last report, this position is in extreme contrast with the Borough of Worthing, where the rates in 1955 were 9.4 for births and 18.2 for deaths. On page 9, I shew in graphic form the birth and death rates in the County during the past twenty-six years. It will be noted that, due to wartime influences, there was a peak period for births in the forties, and, to a less marked extent, a period of high death rates in the four years from 1942 to 1945. It will be interesting to observe in years to cone, how far the age structure of the population in Worthing is counter-balanced, both as regards birth and death rates, by the increasing influence of the age structure of the population in Crawley. During the year efforts were made, by means of notices displayed in surgeries of general practitioners and distribution of leaflets etc. by Health Visitors, to increase the response to vaccination against smallpox of infants under one year of age. From the Table on page 33 it will be seen that 2258 such children were vaccinated in 1955. This corresponds to 48*2 per cent of the number of births during the same period, and, although this figure does not justify complacence, it compares favourably with that of the rest of the Country. In the absence of any cases of smallpox it is difficult to get parents to realise the importance of having their children protected in infancy . With regard to the other infectious diseases it will be seen from Table V on page 13 that there was an outbreak of Measles during the year - this disease recurs in epidemic form every two or three years. Dysentery was also more prevalent than in the previous year. There, were 59 cases of Poliomyelitis (as compared with 14 in 1954). Of these, 27 were of the noil-paralytic type. The incidence was much heavier in the rural districts than in the urban areas (see page 13). Tuberculosis showed a decrease in 1955, both as regards cases notified and in the number of deaths. Tho number of notifications