[Report 1960] / Medical Officer of Health, Wortley R.D.C.

  • Wortley (England). Rural District Council.
Date:
1960
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1960] / Medical Officer of Health, Wortley R.D.C. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    6/110 (page 4)
    Annual Report of the Medical Officer of Health for the year I960. To the Chairman and Members of the Wortley Rural District Council* Ladies and Gentlemen, I have the honour to submit my Annual Report upon the Health Services of the Wortley Rural District for the year ended 31st December, I960. The report takes the usual form of statistics with comment, and there is no marked difference in lay-out from the report of last year. The only particular requests made by the Minister affecting the District Council are that he is anxious to have some facts about water supplies, and he also asks for a report in respect of the administration of the Factories Act as it applies to the district. This latter report is in a prescribed form and is to be included as an annexe, and this I have done. Once again I am including some information, both statistical and comment, concerning the extent to which the Services of the Local Health Authority have been used within the Wortley Rural District. ■iii The Birth Rate for the year has increased a few decimal points compared with the figure for 1959* and at 15o9 per 1,000 of the population it is lower than that for England and Wales and for the Administrative Gounty of the West Riding. After application of the comparability factor the corrected Birth Rate of 16.1 is still lower than that for the rest of the Country. The Crude Death Rate has increased slightly but is lower than that for England and Wales and for the west Riding Administrative County. The corrected Death Rate is 11.7, about the average for the Country generally. The Still-birth Rate has fallen from 20.1 to 15*3 per 1,000 live and still-births, and at that figure it compares very favourably with England and Wales, and better still with the figure for the Administrative County of the West Riding. We are still av&iting the results of the large scale investigation which took place a year or two ago into Neo—natal and Peri—natal deaths, and I have no doubt that when we do get any information it will give us some idea as to possible causes of this relatively high Still-birth Rate. I have no doubt that there is a common factor between Still-births and Neo-natal deaths. The total number of deaths increased by 38 compared with 1959, and on looking over the table of Principal Causes of Death one finds that the highest number of deaths was due to diseases of the Circulatory System, which includes Coronary Disease. The number of deaths in this category accounted for 39^ of the total. The next highest category was Cancer, where there was a total of 82 deaths, 10 fewer than in 1959 and a little over 15% of the total number of deaths. Included in those cases there were 10 deaths due to Cancer of the Lung, 9 fewer than in 1959<> I think we must concern ourselves here, at the moment, with the fact that so far as Wortley Rural District is concerned one death in approximately every 54 was due to Cancer of the Lung. This fact makes one ponder whether or not there are predisposing factors which can be controlled without much elaborate machinery. Many things have been mentioned as possible