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6
very properly placed on environmental hygiene, completely transforming
the public health. By the turn of the century cholera had
been banished and the enteric diseases reduced enormously. In
1970, ironically enough, during European Conservation Year when
public attention, for quite different reasons, was focused sharply
once more on the preservation of a healthy physical environment,
another, fortunately milder, type of cholera reached Europe. One
case—the first for many decades—was notified in England, the
infection being contracted abroad on holiday. No further cases
ensued—a tribute to the prevailing high standard of sanitation and
to the adequacy of the measures taken to protect water supplies
from contamination. The need, nonetheless, for unremitting vigilance
on the part of the health service remains, This constant
wariness is reinforced by the knowledge, in an era of increasing
business and holiday travel abroad, that considerably more than
half of the cases of typhoid and paratyphoid infection notified each
year in this country are contracted overseas. Much essential but
unspectacular follow-up of contacts in these as in other serious
communicable diseases is required. In all this control activity the
public health inspectorate—the lineal sanitary descendants of the
inspectors of nuisances—have a key part to play.
Environmental hygiene and communicable disease control continue
to loom large therefore in contemporary public health.
Accordingly it is especially pleasing to record a substantial improvement
in the staffing of the enviromental health service, following
a fundamental reorganization which entailed the creation of
housing, food and general divisions. The more attractive career
structure afforded by this redeployment to public health inspectors,
technical assistants and administrative staff alike had a tonic effect
upon recruitment. By the end of the year the establishment was
almost up to strength, with a corresponding increase in sanitary
activity as shown by the statistics in part three of the Report. To
have a virtually full complement of staff was particularly welcome
in view of the size of the task in a large central borough, with the
prospect of appreciably heavier responsibilities on the horizon in
the shape of the new Covent Garden Market at Nine Elms,
scheduled to open in 1973.
Housing remains the major environmental health problem in this
country. During the year increasing attention was focused both
nationally and in Wandsworth on the remedying of unsatisfactory
conditions in houses in multiple occupation and the improvement
of older dwellings in order to prevent irremediable deterioration
taking place in structurally sound buildings. To this end in the
autumn the Council endorsed an intensification of the campaign
against unsatisfactory housing in multiple occupation and approved
the establishment of a central housing improvement group to which
staff were seconded from the several departments concerned. The
Deputy Chief Public Health Inspector, Mr. Montague, became the