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1
Public Health Department,
Town Hall, N.l.
To the Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors,
of the Metropolitan Borough of Islington.
I have the honour and privilege of presenting my Tenth Annual Report on the
health of the Metropolitan Borough of Islington for the year ended 31st December,
1950.
Progress in preventive medicine is not spectacular, but nevertheless each year
brings some small addition to one aspect or another of the health services, so that
when we look back, even only over a few years, it is possible to see that substantial
improvements have been effected.
Measured by the general death rate and the low infant mortality, the health
of the Borough can be regarded as satisfactory. This, however, is far from
indicating that improvements and, in some respects, considerable improvements
are not desirable and cannot be effected with further efforts. It is satisfactory,
for example, to record that, after a post-war increase for several years in the number
of new cases of pulmonary tuberculosis notified each year, 1950 has shown a decrease.
With approximately 500 new cases of respiratory tuberculosis during the year
there is obviously room for considerable further improvements as regards the major
infectious disease of our times.
Tuberculosis is an illness in which social circumstances play a considerable
part. If the tuberculous patient, having been diagnosed, cannot obtain rapid
admission to hospital or sanatorium for treatment, and if any tuberculous patient
under observation or treatment, has to share a bedroom with other members of the
family because there is no other room available, then both the patient and the
community will have to pay very heavily.
I again have occasion in my Annual Report to refer to the difficulties of the
housing situation in Islington. The long list of successful prosecutions under the
Public Health (London) Act, 1936, for failure to abate statutory nuisances, is in
itself evidence of the difficulties with which owners are now faced in their statutory
obligation to maintain, in a habitable condition, property which is largely out-of-date.
Although the Council and the London County Council are providing new housing
in substantial volume, it is doubtful whether such new housing even keeps pace
with the wear and tear in old housing. In some instances owners have abandoned
their properties through financial inability to maintain them in a habitable condition.
Although it has not yet been possible to resume slum clearance, there have
been preliminary surveys in anticipation of resumption in the near future, even
though this may have to be initially on a limited scale.
Infectious disease, in general, is decreasing, but the two exceptions are poliomyelitis
and food poisoning. 1950 was a year in which the number of cases of
poliomyelitis in the Borough were considerably greater than in pre-war years,
although less than in 1949. The extent of food poisoning does not depend so much
on medical control as on public insistence of good hygiene standards in food
establishments, and the intelligent application by all those concerned in the handling