[Report 1948] / Medical Officer of Health, Marlow U.D.C.

  • Marlow (Buckinghamshire, England). Urban District Council.
Date:
1948
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1948] / Medical Officer of Health, Marlow U.D.C. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Council Offices, Court Garden, Marlow, Bucks. August, 1949. To the Chairman and Members of the Marlow Urban District Council. Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, I have the honour to submit my first Annual Report as your Medical Officer of Health. The work detailed in this Report was undertaken by predecessors Dr. F.H.P. Wills and Dr. R.T. Sheehan. The Birth Rate for the year 1948 was again slightly in excess of the general birth rate for England and Wales, the comparative iigures being 18.3 and 17.9 respectively. The Infant Mortality Rate at 4P.7 appears unfavourable against the point out to you that when such small are taken to represent ''rates”, no be imputed. For example, had the less, i.e. had four children died rate would have been the same as general rate of 34? but I would figures as we are here dealing with very real statistical significance can absolute figure for this rate been one instead of five, the infant mortality that for England and Wales. The DeathRate too, was again slightly greater than tnau for England and Wales, being 12.3 against 10.8 but was less than fche iigure recorded in last year's Report. Heart diseases and Cancer headed. ^ as ^he principal causes of death and Cancer alone accounted for 16.231 of the total. The number of new cases of Tuberculosis remained constant at 3? but this year all cases were of the respiratory type. as I have pointed out above a statistical conclusion drawn from such small igures would be invalid! but this figure is in conformity with the trend wmch has been shewn in other parts of the country. This trend indicates w<? • ^sP^'C^s the problem of Tuberculosis, (i) a decrease in the 1-f^0n ra^° °£‘ non-pulmonary tuberculosis, due almost certainly to G stringent supervision of sanitary inspectors and veterinary surgeons production, and the public demand for the higher grades of milk; '1IL' persistent existence of sub-standard housing conditions with resultant overcrowding and a more advantageous medium for the disseminatir of the human tubercle bacillus. As we are all aware, housing is today the most major problem in domestic policy and until it is satisfactorily solved the great resultant advances in the public health will be ^•°cordingly retarded. Your Council have taken firm steps along this road to solution and I hope that the next Report will shew even greater advances. No woman lost her life as a result of childbirth. Measles with 93 cases and whooping-cough with 11, continued to be the outstanding infectious diseases of the year. There was one notification of diphtheria but no fatalities. Immunisation against diptheria and whooping-cough is being carried out in all schools and. clinics and by the general practitioners in your District. Although still in the experimental stage, the results of immunisation against whooping cough shew considerable hope of a reduction at least in the severity of this disease.