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1
Public Health Department,
Town Hall, N.l.
To The Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors
of the Metropolitan Borough of Islington.
In presenting my Twelfth Annual Report on the health of the Metropolitan
Borough of Islington for the year ended 31st December, 1952, it is gratifying to
record continued improvement in many important matters of public health.
Uniform progress over the whole field of public health cannot be expected, but
in some matters dramatic and striking improvements have occurred within the space
of a very few years. It should be borne in mind that these changes have probably
been brought about as a result of continuous work and effort, frequently during
disappointing years before improvements began to be manifest. The personal health
services were initiated, developed, and built up into efficient organisations by the
Sanitary Authorities, mainly between the two World Wars, before they were
eventually transferred on 5th July, 1948, to the County Council as Local Health
Authority under the National Health Service Act, 1946.
It is exceedingly gratifying that the Borough Council's organisation of Welfare
Centres, Medical Officers, Health Visitors, Immunisation Clinics, etc. which had
already by 1948 contributed so much to the health of the people of Islington,
especially the mothers and children, has continued under the Local Health Authority
to carry out these fundamental measures of prevention and health education which
have contributed to produce some of the extraordinarily good results for 1952 which
are recorded in this Report.
To take one example, it has been noted with pleasure that the infant mortality
rate for 1952 was only 22 per thousand infants born alive ; the best survival rate
for infants to be recorded in the public health history of this Borough by quite a
substantial margin. This rate is only about a third of what was regarded as a
relatively satisfactory rate in the years immediately prior to World War II—and
we have by no means arrived at the lowest possible rate, whatever that might be.
When this low infant mortality rate is taken in conjunction with the congested
housing conditions, where so high a proportion of all families share water-supply,
kitchen, and water closet accommodation, as shown in the Registrar-General's Census
Return quoted in this Report, it is indeed a testimony to the improvement in the
standard of mothercraft.
The Report for 1952 also records another highly satisfactory feature, to which
many years of work by the Public Health Department have contributed. For the
first time on record there has not been a single confirmed case of diphtheria in the
Borough during the year. Whether this remains so will depend to a considerable
extent on the continued response of parents to the immunisation facilities offered
by the Local Health Authority.
Tuberculosis, unfortunately, still remains a major problem. The number of new
case of tuberculosis of the lungs reported during the year was actually greater than