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The housing situation arising from air raid destruction
and damage, and the evacuation and return of residents is too
complex and unstable to enable much useful comment to be made
at the present juncture. Cynical as it may sound, it is
nevertheless true that it has taken the horrors of war to
compel us to face the necessity for the prompt and wholesale
renewal of bad and worn-out housing that would have taken
generations to accomplish by the slow and piecemeal methods of
pre-war days.
THE FUTURE.
Concentrated as must be most of our energies on the task
of the immediate present, it is not too early to give some
small consideration to the even greater task that peace and
reconstruction will place upon us. Most of these matters
involve national planning, and questions of policy outside my
jurisdiction, but there are nevertheless many important matters
in which local health administration will have its part to
play, whatever the actual shape of the new social order. This
particularly applies, for example,' to the Maternity and Child
Welfare service which, before the war, was recognised to be in
need of much more adequate premises and is now most seriously
cramped for working space.
The warning about health conditions which I ventured to
include in my interim report for 1939 has been justified by
the figures which it has been my duty to submit in the earlier
part of this report. Notwithstanding the claims of the war
effort, indeed because of that effort, we must not only
maintain our health services at the highest possible standard
of adequacy, and efficiency, but plan for their extension after
the war. The shortage of medical personnel in relation to
present and prospective needs renders it urgently desirable
. that these resources shall be organised in the most effectivemanner
in the public interest.
I am, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Your obedient servant,
Medical Officer of Health.