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4 REPORT OF THE MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH FOR 1954
factor has been the ready help and co-operation which has been
forthcoming from everyone connected with the work.
Over and above the statutory or generally accepted duties of a
Medical Officer of Health are two ancillary functions which ought
to be undertaken whenever opportunity presents, since apart from
their intrinsic worth, they are valuable and stimulating adjuncts to
the routine work of the Medical Officer of Health and the Health
Department. I refer to the academic teaching of public health work
and to the conduct of research into problems of public health and
preventive medicine. I should like to say a word about some of the
work which we are doing in this area which, although not exclusive to
the Borough Council Health Department, has an interest and bearing
on our work in the environmental health services.
Firstly, to deal with the question of teaching. We have been fortunate
in making an arrangement with the London School of Hygiene
and Tropical Medicine whereby a number of lectures on public
health administration are given, and thereafter students of the
School, who are all medical men and women studying for the London
University Postgraduate Diploma in Public Health, attend our
departments to study methods and practice of public health administration
in this country. During the Spring and Summer terms, for
one session per week, we receive about a dozen students from the
School. Dealing as we do with both environmental and personal
health services, we are able to give to the students what we hope is a
wide, all-embracing, and at the same time well-balanced exposition of
the principles and practice of public health administration in this
country. Over the past three years some 70 students from many
parts of the world and Commonwealth have passed through our
departments. We hope that they will carry back with them to the
various countries from which they come, useful ideas of what we
have been able to show them.
Turning to the problem of research, there are many questions in
public health and preventive medicine which need investigation.
One of them is to decide whether three injections of a combined
diphtheria/whooping cough preventative are as effective in the
prevention of both diphtheria and whooping cough as injections
against the two diseases given separately. The advantage of the
"combined" method is that a child has to have only three injections
instead of five.
Research of this kind is an expensive and a prolonged procedure
and unless special staff and facilities are available, it is rarely that a