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The Maternal Mortality rate which remained in the region of four
deaths per thousand births for the greater part of the same period and
appeared to resist all efforts at improvement has, only in the last decade,
fallen to less than one per thousand.
The General Death rate of 12.36 per thousand of population in
Hornsey as against 12.0 for the Country as a whole is due to the higher
proportion of persons of advanced age in the Borough. Indeed the
care of aged and infirm has become one of the chief problems of the
Health Authority (County Council of Middlesex).
The Prevalence of Poliomyelitis
The only blot on an otherwise very clean bill of health for 1947
was the epidemic of infantile paralysis (Poliomyelitis).
The notifications of this disease numbered 31 of which 14
occurred in September and 22 in the months July, August, September
and the first week in October. It is essentially a summer disease and
tends to be epidemic in warm, dry seasons. Twenty-three cases were
admitted to the Isolation Hospital, Muswell Hill, 5 were admitted to
other Hospitals and 3 were nursed at home. Of the total cases notified
(31), 10 turned out to be other conditions not obviously connected with
poliomyelitis, 7 cases were so mild that no paralysis developed, but
examination of their cerebro-spinal fluids showed the increase in lymphocytic
cells which is also a feature of paralytic poliomyelitis. They were
therefore believed to be the same infection as infantile paralysis. They
are called "benign lymphocytic meningitis" from which recovery was
complete in all cases. Eleven cases developed some paralysis in some
part of the body and 3 other cases were of such overwhelming severity
or affected such vital centres in the brain that death supervened early in
the illness.
One Year Later
The eleven cases which developed paralysis have been visited in
October, 1948—a year or more after their illness—when it was found
that nine had made a complete or almost complete recovery. A girl
aged 4 years is at Heatherwood Orthopaedic Hospital, Ascot, with some
weakness of the left foot which gives her a slight limp. A boy aged
6 years has paralysis of the left leg and is wearing a caliper. He has
recently left the district with his parents.
We are singularly fortunate in a recovery rate which leaves us
without a case so crippled as to be "handicapped" in the sense of requiring
special education or special occupation.
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