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(5)
To the Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors of the
Metropolitan Borough of Finsbury.
I have the honour to present Annual Report for 1947 of the work
of the Public Health Department.
Special interest centred round the outbreak of acuto Poliomyolitis
which sproad through this and other countries during the summor. For-
tunately the incidenco in this Borough was not as high as in some other
parts of London and at no time gave rise to any serious alarm. There were
no fatal cases and the majority of the 10 cases which were notifiod were
very mild. It is probablo that a number of other abortive cases occurred
but remained unrecognizod. Some concern was felt when one case occurred
in a Day Nursery, but it was decided not to close it in view of the hardship
which such a step would cause. Parents were, however, warned of the
occurrence and permitted to withdraw. A few did so for a few days, but
soon the Nursery was again filled to capacity. The dopartment remained
throughout the opidemic soason preparod to take all reasonable precautions
possible to safeguard the community, but did not institute
any panic measures.
The year othorwise was uneventful and represented a further stage
in the transition from war to peace conditions - a process that proved to
be slower than most of us had anticipated.
Unfortunately, the Medical Officer of Health, is not in a
position to assess the general health of the community with any degree
of accuracy as he has no source of detailed information as to the incidence
of sickness, other than infectious disease. The general health
may therefore only be estimated by means of the vital statistics. It
must be remembered, however, that these are liable to lead to false
deductions unless it is constantly borne in mind that they may reflect
health conditions of previous years and these in turn may be dependent
on environmental conditions of yet earlier years. For example, bad
conditions in one year may not adversely the health of the
individual to the next or suceeding years and perhaps not at all if not
continued, and then may only reduce the span of life by a few years and
so only affect mortality rates many years later; or, again, adverse
conditions in childhood may influence motherhood and so affect infant
mortality ten or more years later.
With these reservations it is pleasing, however, to note the
following points:
The birth rate was 22.2, the highest recorded rate since 1926.
The death rate was 14.9, the lowest rate since 1940, and may
probably be considered as satisfactory when compared with the lowest rates
of 12,6 and 12.8 recorded in 1935 and 1933 respectively, when it is
remembered that allowance should be made for a larger percentage of
persons living now in the older age groups. It may be noted that out
of the total of 522 deaths, 305, or 59%, were of persons over 65 years
of age. This compares with 53% in 1938, 42% in 1934 and very strikingly
with 17% in 1882 (St. Lukes). There was no particular cause of