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Large changes in the form of the Annual Report will henceforth
be required. This Report is, therefore, the first of a new
series, and it will be my duty and my endeavour to develop the
Annual Reports in the sense indicated so well by the memorandum
drafted by the Medical Officer of the Local Government
Board, under date December, 1896; a memorandum designed
for the guidance of Medical Officers of Health, and for the
promotion of uniformity with regard to the matter and the form
of their Reports.
The duties charged upon your Medical Officer of Health are
now also varied and extended by Article 18 of the Order of the
Local Government Board (8th December, 1891), while the duties
of your Sanitary Inspectors are defined in Article 19 of the same
Order. It will be of interest to the members of the Vestry to
fully realise the changes which will have come about in the
Annual Reports, and in the scope and character of the duties
to be discharged by your Medical Officer of Health. In this
first of the new series of Reports, a place may well be found
for the admirable memorandum drafted by Dr. Thorne Thorne,
and for the Article from the Order of the Local Government
Board.
Those documents are as follows:—
London.
Memorandum as to Annual Reports of Medical
Officers of Health.
Every Medical Officer of Health appointed under Order of the
Local Government Board, is required to make an annual report with
regard to the Sanitary District which is under his superintendence.
This report is to be for the year ending the 31st of December, or,
if the officer at that date has not been in office for a whole year,
then for so much of the year as has elapsed since his appointment.
The report is to be made to the Sanitary Authority, and the Medical
Officer of Health himself should send a copy of it to the Local
Government Board and to the London County Council. It should
be made to the Sanitary Authority as soon as practicable after the
expiration of the year to which it relates, and should be in the hands both
of the Sanitary Authority and of the Local Government Board within,
??? most, five months from the end of the year. The Board's copy
of the report should be forwarded to them when the original is sent
to the Sanitary Authority, except where the report is likely to be
printed by order of the Authority. In such cases the Board need
only be supplied with a printed copy.