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231
For the first time ever, legislation covering sanitary coditions
in offices was introduced in the Offices, Shops and
Railway Premises Act of 1963 and, during the same year, results
were published of a very valuable survey of perinatal mortality
instituted by the National Baby Trust Fund which will be quoted
for some years to come.
Further housing legislation was brought into being by the
Act of 1964 which, inter alia, gave local authorities powers to
compel improvement of dwellings and extended their control
over houses in multiple occupation. As a temporary measure,
the Government, at the latter end of the year, introduced the
Prevention from Eviction Act in order to relieve the rising
anxiety and distress occasioned to tenants by the threat of
dispossession under the Rent Act of 1957.
Naturally, the final year of the Council as a Metropolitan
Borough Authority was overshadowed by its impending elimination
and much attention had to be given to establishing rapport
with the amalgamating authorities.
Inaugurated at a time when education was limited, hygiene
almost unknown and preventive health was some obscure,
abstract science, the Metropolitan Boroughs, often against overwhelming
odds and great prejudice and superstition, were
destined to lay the foundations of stable community health which
were to be the envy of most other countries.
Vital statistics for 1964 give factual evidence, if such were
needed, of the enormous advances achieved in social and
environmental health during the lifetime of the Metropolitan
Boroughs. The pattern of disease has already changed, for immunisation
and extensive use of chemotherapeutic drugs and antibiotics
have made control of all lethal infections a practical
possibility. Despite periodical outbreaks, communicable disease
is no longer of vital consequence and attention of health
authorities must now be directed towards the degenerative
diseases and ailments associated with the stresses of modern
living. Indeed, a new concept of Public Health and Social
Medicine is already emerging and even further changes are
presaged.
At the passing of the Metropolitan Borough of Greenwich,
what problems in the health field still remain? Despite much
theorising, housing problems are unresolved and are likely to be