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6
Metropolitan Borough of Stoke newington
REPORT OF THE MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH
FOR THE YEAR 1949
PUBLIC HEALTH DEPARTMENT,
TOWN HALL,
STOKE NEWINGTON, N.I6
TO THE MAYOR, ALDERMEN AND COUNCILLORS
OF THE METROPOLITAN BOROUGH OF STOKE NEWINGTON.
This Annual Report is presented in the abridged form required by
the Ministry of Health during the war years and subsequently but, nevertheless,
contains sufficient evidence of the essential value of the work of
the Public Health Department.
The basic requirements of public health are saticfactory environmental
services, i.e. good housing, clean food, healthy conditions of
working in factories and workshops, satisfactory drainage and the destruction
of rats and parasitic conditions, the prevention of disastrous outbreaks
of epidemic disease and food poisoning, and other injurious conditions of
the first importance.
In the absence of satisfactory 'environmental' services, the
'personal' services, however valuable, will merely result in a patching
up of ill health and damage which could and should be prevented from
occurring for although the maternity and child welfare centres, health
centres, day nurseries and school treatment centres may in themselves be
splendid, the results will be most disappointing unless the fundamental
environmental requirements are satisfied.
The writer of the extract from the weekly article which appears in
'The Municipal Journal' under the heading, "From the desk of a
Medical Officer of Health" (reproduced later on page 12), and who
has had outstanding experience as a Medical Officer of Health, when the