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To the Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors
of the Borough of Hornsey.
Mr Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have the honour to submit my Annual Report as Medical Officer
of Health of the Borough of Hornsey for the year ending December 31st,
1948.
An appendix to this report gives information relating to the prevalence
of poliomyelitis in this district in 1949 up to September 5th.
This is the twentieth and last whole year I have occupied the office
of Medical Officer of Health and is in many respects the most remarkable
of them all.
VITAL STATISTICS
It was a year in which the vital statistics were by far the best ever
recorded. The birth rate was 17.6 per 1,000 of population; the death
rate 10.3; and the infant mortality rate of 17.3 per thousand live births
(compared with the previous best in Hornsey of 26.8 in 1947 and 34 for
England and Wales in 1948). The infant mortality rate is regarded as
the most delicate index of the state of the public health. The figure for
1948 surely makes Hornsey the healthiest town in the world!
There were no maternal deaths in the 1,731 births occurring in
1948; and there were no deaths at any age from any of the common
infectious diseases. This is the 7th successive year in which no death
occurred from diphtheria.
Trichotomy of Health Services
In the middle of a year which furnished such abundant evidence of
the Borough Council's success as a Health Authority it ceased to be a
health authority. Its health functions suffered trichotomy—the parts of
the dismembered whole being (1) Hospital beds; (2) Personal Health
Services; (3) Environmental Health Services.
1. Hospital Beds
Lying-in beds to the number of thirty at the Alexandra Maternity
Home, Muswell Hill, were provided by Hornsey Borough Council.
Beds for infectious diseases (160) were owned jointly at Coppetts Road,
Muswell Hill, with the neighbouring districts of Finchley, Wood Green,
and Friern Barnet. All of these were transferred with staffs and equipment
to the newly formed North West Metropolitan Regional Hospital
Board which administers all hospital beds for all purposes in an area
stretching from Westminster to the borders of Northamptonshire. This
area includes one quarter of London, nine-tenths of Middlesex, half of
Hertfordshire, the whole of Bedfordshire, and parts of Berkshire and
Buckinghamshire, and carries a population of 4,000,000.
2. "Personal Health Services "
The "Personal Health Services" are all services for expectant and
nursing mothers, children under 5, and school children.
The care of the mothers and some 5,000 children under 5 was
formerly the responsibility of the Maternity and Child Welfare Committee
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