[Report 1950] / Medical Officer of Health, Cardiganshire County Council.

  • Cardiganshire (Wales). County Council.
Date:
1950
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1950] / Medical Officer of Health, Cardiganshire County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    9/44 (page 7)
    INTRODUCTION. The area of the county is 443,189 acres ; its population, 53,993 ; the live birth rate is 13.0 ; the crude death rate is 16. For purposes of comparison with the rest of England and Wales, comparability factors have been used to find the corrected death rate of the rural and urban districts of the county ; 13.0 is the corrected death rate for rimal Cardiganshire and 12.2 for the urban districts. Tuberculosis. Migration to the towns of young people, and the deaths of young adults from tuberculosis, are two important influences affecting the size of the Cardiganshire population, tending to reduce, as they do, the number of those who found families. Of the two, however, the latter influence is ceasing to be signiflcant. There has been a steady and continuous fall in the tuberculosis death rate for many years, until in 1950 there were only 16 deaths, which gives a death rate of 0.29 per thousand of the population, lower than that of England and Wales, which is 0.31, and the lowest on record for the county. There is evidence, too, from mass radiography, that fewer young people are becoming infected, and for those who are infected the resistance to the disease is rising. Of 2,719 persons examined by mass radiography, no child under 15 years of age was found to be suffering from active tuberculosis. In the age group 15—24 years there was 1 ; in the 25—34 age group there was 1 ; and in the 35—44 age group there were 4. Resistance to the disease was shown by the relatively high number of persons who were found to be infected in the past but who had recovered. There were 72 of these. Of the agencies which operate to reduce infection in the homes, prominent are the tuberculosis service which cures and renders non-infective parents and others living there ; family doctors and health visitors who send in cases for early treatment, and mass radiography which can • reveal tuberculosis in its curable stages. In the schools the Local Education Authority prevents infection of child by teacher by employing as teachers only those who are proved by X-ray examination to be free of tuberculosis. At the same time it pro- motes and maintains resistance to the disease by providing school meals and school milk, and, by replacing the small windows of the older schools by large ones, has given the children sunshine to which they so quickly react. Children. During the year no child died of scarlet fever, measles, whooping cough, diphtheria, typhoid, ]3oliomyelitis, encephalitis, cerebro-spinal fever. But there were 20 still- births, giving a relatively high figure of 28 per 1,000 live births, and 16 babies under 4 weeks old died of ill defined disease, giving a rate of 23 per 1,000 total births.