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5
To the Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors of the
Metropolitan Borough of Battersea.
Mr.Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have the pleasure of presenting to you the Annual Report on the
health of the Borough of Battersea for the year 1962. Following the
practice of previous years the report is mainly statistical with comments
on some points of interest.
The population of the Borough has been declining and in 1962
there was a further reduction of 960 to 104,020. More details have now
become available from the 1961 Census and I have, therefore, included
in the body of the report the Ward populations for that year. I have
also extracted from the 1961 Census and the 1951 Census certain data
which throws some light on the variation in the population age groups
of the Borough. Of particular interest is the 26.7 per cent increase in the
number of elderly people over 80 years of age, despite a 9.6 per cent.
overall decrease in the population.
Although the population of the Borough is declining the number of
births are increasing and in 1962 the birth rate was 20.81 per thousand
of the population as compared with 19.18 last year. The rate for England
and wales was 18.0. The death rate showed an increase at 11.90 from
10.87.The corresponding figures for London, and England and Wales,
were 12.0 and 11.9 respectively.
The number of deaths of children under one year of age was
practically the same as in 1961, namely 45 as against 44, but owing to the
increased numbers of births the infant mortality rate has dropped from
21.41 to 20.59. The number of deaths of infants in the first month of life
was three fewer than in 1961, giving a neonatal death rate of 13.73 as
against 16.06. In 1960 and 1961 no deaths occurred as a result of
childbrith; this was something of a "record" in that it was the first
time that no maternal deaths had been reported in consecutive years.
In 1962 there was one maternal death giving a maternal mortality rate
of 0.45.
Apart from smallpox, which I will deal with more fully below, 1962
was not a Particularly notable year as far as infectious diseases were
concerned. It was a non-measles year and as a result the number of
cases of measles was 165 as compared with 1,906 in 1961. The total
number of notifications of infectious diseases was 424 as against 2,187,
the reduction being mainly due, as mentioned above, to the smaller
number of cases of measles. I am happy to report that no cases of Poliomyelitis
come to our notice during the year. The ninety-four cases of
dysentery notified were mainly sporadic in nature, except for an outbreak
at a day nursery 16 of the children. This disease is not normally
a serious illness except in the very young or debilitated people, but it can
have a considerable nuisance value especially when it arises in institutions
such as day nurseries.
Towards the end of 1961, smallpox was once again imported into
this contury, on this occasion as a result of infected immigrants flying
in from Pakistan. Cases arose in parts of London, the Midlands, the
North and south Wales, and although no clinical case of the disease
arose in Battersea, like most other health departments we were involved
in the almost nation-wide operation of discovering and watching any
possible source of infection. When smallpox is known to be present
in the country, particular vigilance is paid to the early diagnosis of the