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7
PUBLIC HEALTH DEPARTMENT,
TOWN HALL. GREENWICH. S.E.10
To The Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors.
Metropolitan Borough of Greenwich.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have the honour to present the Annual Report on the health
and environmental circumstances of Greenwich for 1963, which has
been a year of solid progress and has seen the preliminary steps
taken to improve the services available to certain of the more
vulnerable sections of the local community.
Although the total population shows a decrease of 970, there
was a slight increase in births and a decline in deaths. The infant
mortality rate at 14.3 per thousand live births was the lowest ever
recorded in the history of the Borough, and is all the more gratifying
in that, for some years the rate has been higher than one would
have wished. It is, of course, trends over several years, perhaps
even a decade, that are significant, but after several successive
years on the high side it is encouraging to see the rate back to a
level which compares favourably with any area in the country.
There were corresponding decreases in neo-natal, early neo-natal
and peri-natal deaths.
Turning to the actual causes of deaths, there were, for the
second successive year, no maternal deaths. Apart from deaths
from tuberculosis, which increased by four, there were decreases in
all the main causative categories. It is pleasing to note a decrease
in deaths from lung cancer and cardio-vascular conditions, although
it is much too early to draw any conclusions as to the underlying
reasons. Enough has been written about stress and respiratory
irritants and carcinogenic factors in previous reports to indicate
the main lines of prevention but the results of anti smoking and
clean air campaigns can only be measured in the long term. The
recently published results of an investigation conducted in America
into the causative factors of pulmonary malignancy and circulatory
disturbances, only serve to emphasise the irrefutable validity of the
warnings which have been given in this country about the dangers
of cigarette smoking.