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12
months of 1963, the number of deaths both from heart disease and
from diseases of the lungs were lower than in the previous year.
Deaths from motor vehicle accidents dropped from 18 in 1962
to 8 in 1963, but 1962 was a black year for these accidents and
the figure for 1961 was 5. These deaths, it should be pointed
out, are related to the place in which the persons lived and
not the place at which the accident occurred.
The number of suicides was 28 which is fractionally higher
than the average in the past 10 years.
INFECTIOUS AND OTHER DISEASES,
The total number of cases of infectious disease notified
was 927 as compared with 423 during 1962, but if cases of
measles are excluded the total of other notifications was 190
as compared with 230.
Whilst some of the infectious diseases or important complications
of the disease can now be treated very successfully with
modern drugs, the prevention of communicable disease is largely
dependent on the use of vaccines to protect the individual, combined
with the tracing and isolation of the source of infection.
In Hampstead diphtheria immunisation was started in 1934;
vaccination against smallpox was compulsory, at least in theory,
until 1948, and protection became available against other
diseases during the years before and after the war. When it
became apparent that parents were not prepared to subject their
children to an unlimited number of injections the manufacturers
were successful in combining two or more vaccines to be given
at the same time.
The diseases against which protection was recommended were
smallpox, diphtheria, whooping cough and more recently poliomyelitis
and tetanus, with at a later date (usually on leaving
school) tuberculosis.
There was however considerable difference of opinion as to
the order in which these vaccines should be given so as to be
most effective. With the exception of smallpox the vaccines
require at least two and preferably three injections to be
effective, the vaccines are less effective in very young infants
and whooping cough in particular is a far more dangerous disease
during the first year of life than in older children. In
addition there was the contention that the combined vaccines
were more liable to precipitate paralysis in a case of poliomyelitis
which would otherwise have been of a non-paralytic type