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Article 18 (Section 15) of the Board's Order of 8th December,
1891, specifies the information to be .contained in the Annual Report.
The report should be chiefly concerned with the conditions
affecting health in the District, and with the means for improving
those conditions. It should consider these subjects with reference
to the past and future, as well as to the particular year, and the
account of the sanitary state of the District generally should, while
marking the point that has been reached in the sanitary state and
administration of the District, indicate directions for further consideration
and action. The sanitary history of the year under
review should include a record alike of the proceedings of the Medical
Officer of Health himself and of the proceedings taken under his
direction or advice.
The Medical Officer of Health, in reporting his proceedings and
advice, may find it convenient to follow, in the main, the order in
which the subject matters of his duty appear in the several
paragraphs of Article 18. Special care should be taken to
report fully and explicitly in reporting on the influences
affecting or threatening to affect injuriously the public health
within the District ; and the causes, origin, and distribution of
disease within the District may usefully be the subjects of annual
record. An account should also be given both of the actual circumstances
of the District up to the end of the past year, and of any
improvement or deterioration that has occurred during the year in
conditions conducive to health or to disease. For example, a vigilant
health officer has in his annual report an opportunity for pointing out
any facts as to water supplies and house construction, conditions of
storage and of removal of refuse customary in the district; together
with any facts as to the adequacy or inadequacy of means of isolation
and of disinfection, and the like. And such a Health Officer,
reporting on the diseases and their causes within the district, will
generally have some instructive details to give, either of conditions
newly productive of disease, or of matters that have been remedied
with advantage to the public health. In reporting upon section 3,
not only should the fact of having made systematic inspections, but
the outcome from those inspections should be duly put on record.
The report should contain a full account of inspections, whether
systematic or occasional, of the judgment which the Medical Officer
of Health has formed thereon as to the sanitary state of his District,
and of the advice he has in consequence given to the Sanitary
Authority and the action taken by the Authority thereon. By
"systematic" inspections is meant inspections independent of such
inquiries as, under other articles of the Order, the Medical Officer of
Health has to make into particular outbreaks of disease, or into
unwholesome conditions to which his attention may have been specially
called by complaints or otherwise, and such inspections will include
the house-to-house inspections which may be necessary in particular
localities.