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BOROUGH OF SOUTHWARK
Public Health Department, .
Walworth Road, S.E.17.
The Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors,
Metropolitan Borough of Southwark.
Your Worship, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have the honour to submit my Annual Report for the
year 1949.
This is the first printed report for several years, and although
it contains all necessary information it remains in somewhat
abridged form. Personally, however, I feel no regret at the
loss of those formidable tomes of minute detail which were
the conventional annual reports in days when money and
manpower were in greater abundance, and I think it would
be an advantage if the present limits were adopted as a
permanent standard.
Although statistics reveal disturbing prospects by the
increasing population in this already heavily overcrowded
area, the diminution of the birth rate which may conceivably
result in a nation of old people with an ever dwindling younger
generation, and the continued acute distress of the housing
problem, the following pages also reveal a gratifying decline
in the toll of infectious diseases and a year of most satisfactory
achievement in the work of the Sanitary Inspectors.
In this first full year of the working of the National Health
Act since the transfer of powers in 1948, there has been overwhelming
proof of the necessity which I mentioned in my
last report that "... the Medical Officer of Health and the
Public Health Department must continue to fulfil an indispensable
function as liaison agents between the public and the
new responsible bodies." This, however, does not infer that the
Public Health Department is merely a centralised enquiry
bureau ; indeed, the loss of the transferred services has been
supplemented by other duties and increased legislation, and
there is no sign whatever, as some said in 1948, that the Public
Health Departments would have nothing left to do. Certain
serious defects still exist in the new Health Act, particularly
in regard to the care and welfare of aged and infirm persons
and the confusing division of responsibilities for certain medical
services ; there should be no need to upset the scheme as a
whole in order to rectify those parts of it which are in such
urgent need of improvement.