[Report 1946] / Medical Officer of Health, Rhondda U.D.C.

  • Rhondda (Wales). Urban District Council.
Date:
1946
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1946] / Medical Officer of Health, Rhondda U.D.C. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    17/120 (page 15)
    ANNUAL REPORT OF The Medical Officer of Health To the Chairman and Members of the Rhondda Urban District Council Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, I herewith submit my annual report on the sanitary condition and state of the public health in the Rhondda Urban District during 1946. Notwithstanding a natural increase of 728 in population there was a diminution of the estimated population of the district at mid-summer, 1946, amounting to 3,360 persons as compared with the corresponding estimate for the previous year. It may be noted that in the forty-six years of the present century the estimated population of the district increased from a figure of 111,587 persons in 1900 to a maximum of 167,900 persons in 1923 and 1924 and has subsequently decreased to 113,120 persons by mid-summer 1946. The natural increase of the population, that is,> the excess of births over the number of deaths from 1925 to 1946, inclusive, amounted to 12,740 persons and, by adding this number to the difference between populations in 1924 and 1946, it is estimated that approximately 68,000 persons have left the district since the end of the former year. The vital statistics for 1946 were, on the whole, favour- able as compared with previous years ; the birth-rate was higher than in any year since 1926 whilst the infantile and maternal mortalities were the lowest hitherto recorded in the district. The still-birth rate was also lower than in any previous year but continues to compare unfavourably with that of the country as a whole. Unfortunately the previous low record death-rate from pulmonary tuber- culosis obtained in 1945 was not maintained and there was an increase of 0.20 per 1,000 in this figure,