[Report 1921] / Medical Officer of Health, Liverpool City.

  • Liverpool (England). City Council.
Date:
1921
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1921] / Medical Officer of Health, Liverpool City. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    16/302 (page 16)
    Details ot some of the present conditions indicated in the text of the Report. Grants in Aid. The current problems connected with Liverpool’s health administra¬ tion are sufficiently indicated in the pages which follow. Mention may be made of two outstanding needs which have for so1 long discredited Liverpool; one is the need for suitable abattoir accommodation upon a suitable site, a need which met with opposition now happily at an end. There appears every likelihood that a solution of this question has now been found. The other point calling for comment is the question of housing; this, like the other subject, has been delayed by reasons of the war and the consequences which flowed from the war3 but unlike the first-mentioned subject, the delay has accumulated difficulties. Great progress has been made in the outskirts of the City, and attention can now be turned to the unhealthy areas calling for attention within the City. The practice of the Government, initiated by the Local Government Board, and continued by the Ministry of Health, of encouraging work by grants in aid, unquestionably gives a stimulus from, two points of view. The first is the financial aid itself, and the second is the moral effect which this expression of the practical sympathy of the Ministry gives rise to; and furthermore enables the Ministry to keep more closely in touch with the various works in progress. It is perfectly true that sanitation is only effected at great cost: this truth is especially emphasised in Liverpool owing to the large sums which have been required to undo errors of the past. Housing and town-planning problems bear witness to this. The amount expended on sanitation to-day is largely in excess of what it was in 1883. On the other side of the scale, however, must be placed the fact that had the conditions of 1883 remained unaltered and the death-rate at the same figure, there would have been 22,630 deaths in the City in 1921, which is 10,964 more than actually took place. Even to compare present conditions with the year 1895, when the death-rate was 24-8, shows a remarkable improvement. If the 1895 death-rate had continued there would have been 8,595 more deaths in 1921 than actually took place. This shows what effect the diminishing death-rate has on the saving of life in each year, and it must be remembered that a lessening of the