[Report 1965] / Medical Officer of Health, Mexborough U.D.C.

  • Mexborough (England). Urban District Council.
Date:
1965
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1965] / Medical Officer of Health, Mexborough U.D.C. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of smoking has to my knowledge ever succeeded. The evils of atmospheric pollution are not yet fully accepted, over-eating and lack of exercise is still practiced by those susceptible to ischaemic heart disease, and even a simple measure such as fluoridation produces a small but noisy opposition. Numerous committees and associations have for many years given lip service to health education programmes and have recommended the development of 'blanket' campaigns and the investment of support of commercial and voluntary bodies. What is really required is an investigation, to discover whether any health education campaign, however extensive and expensive could have any permanent effect in preventing a healthy human being from enjoying himself. A most important development in public health has been the attachment of health visitors to family doctors, and I have commented each year in my annual report on the development of such schemes. Full attachment has now been achieved and comments from the health visitors themselves are fully quoted in the section of health visiting within this report. I was particularly impressed by the generally favourable attitude of health visitors to such attachment and by the most useful comments on the more difficult aspects. The most common fear expressed was that less would be known about a particular school than before, since their responsibility might be in a different area. Some also found problems in getting to know new families and in passing on their old families to new health visitors. In particular cases, some health visitors were involved in considerably more travelling and found they were doing less visits. These problems however, are clearly initial ones only; the difficulty that health visitors may tend to know a particular school less well, is one, however, that may only be fully solved by the separate appointment of school nurses. Your attention is directed to the school health service report on the mass emergency poliomyelitis vaccination which was carried out towards the end of 1965. This was in response to the outbreak which occurred in Blackburn earlier in the summer of 1965, and it is pleasing to report that over 90% of school children in this area are now immune to poliomyelitis. This should be sufficient to remove any real possibility of an epidemic spread in this area even should an isolated case occur. One case of active tuberculosis arose in a school during the year; the case was discovered during routine skin testing by the school medical officer and following investigation at