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1
Public Health Department,
Town Hall, N.l.
To The Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors
of the Metropolitan Borough of Islington.
The public has come to expect, with justification, continued, if unspectacular,
progress from year to year in matters of public health. Whilst this is in general
true, progress is not necessarily continuous, and new features with perhaps some
unfavourable factors have to be reported as well as favourable ones, and new
problems arise which have to be dealt with. This will be found to be the case on
some of the matters reported in my Fifteenth Annual Report on the health of the
Metropolitan Borough of Islington for the year ended 31st December, 1955.
In the previous year new low records were established in the total death rate
and in the death rate of infants under the age of one year. It was, perhaps, too
optimistic to expect that these low records would be repeated or even improved upon.
The same observation might also be applied to the death rate from tuberculosis of
the lungs which, in 1955, was a little higher than in the previous two years. It
would not be right, however, to regard such increases as a reversal of general trends
over the past few years and there is no reason to think that all the measures—social,
medical and educational—which are believed to have been major factors in health
improvement over the past few years, will not enable a resumption to be made in
reduced mortalities from disease. For the fourth successive year there has been no
death from diphtheria.
It is a matter of common knowledge that cancer of the lung (including
bronchus) now causes many more deaths than tuberculosis of the lungs, and this has
certainly been true in Islington for some years. The Minister of Health has formally
accepted the position that there has been shown to be a causal connection between
smoking—that is cigarette smoking—and lung cancer. This in itself should be
sufficient ground for young people in particular, as well as adults, to pause and
consider very seriously as to whether it is worthwhile commencing or accepting
cigarette smoking as a social habit.
This is, however, not the only ill health charge against the cigarette. In the
Annual Report it will be found that 230, or approximately nine per cent of all
deaths for the year, were ascribed to bronchitis. Bronchitis is not only a cause of
a high proportion of deaths in the Country, but also is responsible for a very
considerable amount of chronic invalidism to many people over many years. It is
made considerably worse by pollution of the air, whether this is done communally
through smoke from the open coal fire or from the factory chimney, or personally
by smoking. Evidence is accumulating that smokers are more badly affected by
bronchitis than non-smokers, and the effect increases with the amount smoked. It
has been estimated that the number of those suffering from bronchitis in this
Country is not less than twenty times the proportionate number of similar sufferers
in the Scandinavian countries, and this difference is probably almost entirely
accounted for by the differences in these factors. Certainly it would be wrong for
the public not to be informed of such facts in these matters as we possess at present.
Unfavourable records in the borough were also established for deaths due to
accidents, both those in connection with motor vehicles and others, and this is
referred to in the body of the Report.