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4
This Report is prepared along the lines directed and requested
by the Ministry of Health and it covers the whole year from
the 1st January, 1965, to 31st December, 1965, although in fact
the Council did not become responsible for the services until
1st April, 1965. This is possible because prior to the 1st April,
1965, information had been supplied by the predecessors of the
new Borough covering the first three months of the year.
I have given careful consideration to the form which this and
subsequent Reports should take. The purpose of the Report of
the Medical Officer of Health is primarily to provide a source of
information about the state of the public health of the area and to
remind members of the Council of what has gone on during the
year ; it also serves to acquaint many others with the conditions in
the area. Various Government departments, not least, the Ministry
of Health, have an interest in the information contained in the
Report of the Medical Officer of Health. Apart from the current
need, however, the Report should be a record reflecting the public
health and social conditions of the time and should, I consider
be so framed as to provide this information. I would hope, therefore,
that my Report will contain information which might be of
interest to future public health administrators, sociologists and
others interested in the public health.
This year, however, there has been little or no time to prepare
detailed reports of the services under the administration of the
Council and so, for the most part, this Report is statistical in
form. The main parts correspond with the main sections of the
work of the Department; thus the traditional division of the work
of the Public Health Department into Environmental Health and
Personal Health is maintained and similarly some of the main
sections are divided into various sub-sections to facilitate composition,
reading and presentation.
With this preliminary outline of the form which I think these
Reports might take, I now turn to a brief review of the work of the
year. Although the Report does not include any description of the
work before the 1st January, 1965, it would be naive not to
mention the vast amount of preliminary planning, reports to the
Committee, and the appointment of staff that was necessary to
enable the Committee to carry out its functions as from the
1st April, 1965. This period of planning and preparation continued
in some measure after 1st April, 1965, but since that date the
main concentration has been on consolidating the preliminary work
and welding the whole department into a harmonious and closely
integrated whole, and altogether I think one can claim that a fair
measure of success has been achieved. Suffice it to say that on the
1st April, 1965, there was no obvious disruption of the services, which
were able to proceed on very much the same lines as they had the
day before. Since then, although we have met difficulties, not the
least of which have been those concerned with staffing, the work
has proceeded and, at the time of writing, without any cause for