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12
In connection with the requirements of the midwifery, mental
health and homelessness services, a 24 hour weekend and holiday
cover has been created and has proved to be of great benefit.
Other health and welfare emergencies are, of course, handled by
this control centre.
In these days a great deal of attention must properly be
directed to the personal health and welfare of the individual and
family, but it must not be forgotten that traditional public health
is still of vital significance and the unflagging energies of the public
health inspectors must be given prominence. The Environmental
Section has continued to advance the slum clearance programme,
many individual unfit houses, basements and parts of houses have
been closed, smoke control areas have been extended and all the
routine and important work of the public health and food inspectors
has proceeded without interruption. The reorganisation of London
government resulted in certain minor changes in procedure
regarding the notification of certain infectious diseases, which are
detailed elsewhere, and the repeal of the Public Health (London)
Act and the various London County Council (General Powers)
Acts has necessitated extensive reorganisation of informal and
statutory procedures. The most important infectious diseases
notified last year were measles, scarlet fever, puerperal pyrexia
and acute primary and influenzal pneumonia. There were only 26
notifications of sonne dysentery and the Borough was free from
typhoid, smallpox and diphtheria. Tuberculosis continues to
decline and 69 notifications were received, compared with 94 the
previous year. The contributions which the chest physicians have
made to this report indicate that other chest and heart diseases
have superseded tuberculosis in community importance.
In connection with causes of death, once again heart and
circulatory diseases and malignancy constituted together about 52%
of all deaths in the Borough. This high figure underlines the
increasing importance of the "stress" diseases and the vital part
which the increasingly heavy consumption of tobacco is playing
in the incidence of circulatory disturbances and respiratory malignancy.
Such preventable aetiological factors are a continual
challenge to the efficacy, the persuasiveness and the ingenuity of
our health educationists.
With the agreement of the Inner London Education Authority
the opportunity has been taken to include the report submitted to
that Authority on the local School Health Service. The Chief
Dental Officer in his report has indicated deficiencies in the local
authority dental services which must be rectified, but the main
difficulty is the recruitment of qualified dental officers and no early