View report page

7
PUBLIC HEALTH DEPARTMENT,
TOWN HALL. GREENWICH, S.E.10.
To The Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors,
Metropolitan Borough of Greenwich.
I have pleasure in presenting the report on the health of Greenwich
for 1962. The population, at 84,730, shows a decrease of
510 although births have increased by 49. Deaths, on the other
hand, also show an increase of 38 and some mention about this
will be made later in this preface.
The infantile mortality rate has increased from 23.11 to 32.66.
This might be dismissed as an unfortunate statistical incident if
the rate for last year had not also been above the national and
the London average. The facts are that 44 infants under one year
died in Greenwich during the year, and this is 14 more than in
1961 and 18 more than in 1960. In attempting an analysis of
these figures it is surprising to find that only two of the infants
were born at home, where it is always assumed that obstetrical
deaths are more liable than in hospital. Against that is the fact,
of course, that hospitals will always be likely to have a higher
number of "high risk"confinements booked because of anticipated
difficulties, or cases admitted in an emergency. There is now,
obviously, a hard core of infant deaths in the early weeks of life,
the underlying causes of which require careful and even fundamental
research. These causes are the more obscure because they
involve the primordial processes of foetal development, about which
little of direct value is known. Premature birth caused 13 deaths,
congenital malformation 6, and the causes of these conditions are
not known with any certainty, and indeed the ascertainment of the
precise causes of deaths in infants requires more intensive investigation.
Considering further the causes of the 44 infant deaths
which have been reported, there would seem to be an indication
that 17 infants died from illnesses which might be thought at least
potentially to be preventable. I refer to such conditions as pneumonia,
bronchitis, foetal distress due to delivery complications and
other obstetrical difficulties which might in other circumstances
have been anticipated. Looking at the quinquennial averages of
infantile mortality rates, there has been no material improvement
since 1951 and since 1960 the figures have been deteriorating and
the neonatal and perinatal mortality rate has been rising steadily
as a proportion of the total infant mortality rate.
The perinatal mortality survey in 1958 stressed the importance
of post mortem examination of every case of perinatal death but