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3
ANNUAL REPORT OF THE MEDICAL OFFICER
OF HEALTH FOR 1967
To the Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors
of the London Borough of Wandsworth.
Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have the pleasure of placing before you the third Annual
Report on the health of the London Borough of Wandsworth,
covering the year ended 31st December, 1967.
The health of Wandsworth again remained generally good but,
as hinted in my Report of last year, the current statistical tools
available, while they give a general idea of the health of the community,
may not be sufficiently refined to reflect the total sum of
ill-health (as opposed to mortality), particularly of some forms of
mental ill-health.
The civilian population of the Borough, as estimated by the
Registrar-General, was 330,470, which again showed a slight drop
over the previous year. The total number of births was 6,013
which, compared with 6,350 for 1966, gives an adjusted birth-rate
of 18.06 per 1,000 of the population compared with 18.38 for 1966.
The number of deaths, at all ages, was 4,204 as against 4,512 so
that the adjusted death-rate was 10.55 per thousand of the population,
showing a reduction for the third successive year. The total
number of deaths of infants under one year was the same as last
year, namely 130, but as the total number of births was fewer than
last year, the infant mortality rate per thousand live births showed
a slight increase to 21.60. The perinatal mortality rate, which is
based on the sum of the number of stillbirths and the number of
deaths at ages under one week per thousand total live and stillbirths
was 28.36, a slight reduction from the figure of 28.81 in
1966. In 1967, four women died from causes associated with childbirth,
giving a maternal mortality rate of 0.65 per thousand live
and stillbirths.
The table on page 14 gives a breakdown of the causes of death
in Wandsworth in 1967. Although I have on previous occasions
referred to the three diseases, chronic bronchitis, cancer of the lung
and coronary arterial disease, I make no excuses for doing so
again. Of these, cancer of the lung, widely recognized now as being