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The infant mortality rate of 19 per 1,000 births was very
good, being well below the average, and one of the lowest recorded
rates for the Borough. There were no maternal deaths due to
child-birth.
The marriage rate, at 13.7, was again below the average for
the past 10 years. This figure is somewhat similar to that for last
year and may indicate the end of the post-war rise in the number of
marriages. This may be of interest to the Council as a housing
authority, but I hope the young people are not being deterred from
marriage on account of housing shortage. The question of housing
for young married couples is one that has caused me some concern
during the year. Several of these people have been to see me and
I found that, in one or two cases, the husband and wife had returned
to live each with their own parents and this, of course, is a most
abnormal mode of married life. Others, I found, were given a
room in the home of in-laws but trouble began when children arrived
as, in the cases I had to deal with, the in-laws were unwilling or
unable to provide more accommodation and the crying or noise
created by the children became a nuisance to the older people.
These conditions led to constant friction and inter-family rows and
squabbles, causing utter frustration and unhappiness for the young
family. My chief concern is the likely psychological effect of these
constant rows and unhappiness of the young father and mother on
the children. To me these cases, which often affect three or more
persons, are more urgent than many of the medical cases with which
we have to deal.
Apart from measles and dysentery, there were no epidemics
of any serious infectious diseases. However, despite the vigilance
of your Inspectors in the enforcement of food hygiene, there were
47 cases of food poisoning, a slight increase on the previous year.
It must not be thought that food poisoning is always due to bad
personal hygiene on the part of the preparers or handlers of food.
In recent years it has been proved that it is the food itself which is
infected and is frequently the cause of serious outbreaks of food
poisoning. One has only to refer in this report to the results of
sampling of certain foods by your Inspectors to find that a variety
of imported foods contain harmful bacteria. It is only by constant
sampling of imported foods and vigilance by the Food Inspectors
that prevention and control of food poisoning is possible; hence
the importance I attach to their duties at the many wharves in the
Borough.
One of the highlights of preventive medicine is the gradual
decline in cases of tuberculosis and, owing to new methods of
treatment, a great reduction in deaths from this cause has been
effected. In the Borough there has been a reduction from 115 new
cases in 1950 to 48 in 1959. The deaths have been reduced from
28 in 1950 to 4 in 1959.