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myself with the problems of membership of Boards and how they are to be appointed. That does
not mean to say these matters are insignificant, but they are not matters on which I am able to
express any views.
One general matter with which I would like to deal briefly is that since 1948 there has been an
ever diminishing number of Medical Officer of Health posts in the country due to reorganization
and combinations of authorities for health purposes. This trend has seriously affected the prospects
open to a newly qualified medical practitioner who might otherwise have been attracted to
Public Health work and the proposal to reduce the top posts to only forty or fifty will, in my
opinion, stop recruitment completely. Even the issuing of the Seebohm Report and the Green
Paper must adversely affect the future recruitment of medical and probably other categories of
Local Government service.
At present there are 175 Local Health Authorities each with a Medical Officer of Health and
956 Local Sanitary Authorities with 396 Medical Officers of Health. It will be recalled that the
recent reorganisation in London reduced more than 100 posts of Medical Officer of Health to 32
eliminating about 70 in the process.
The Green Paper envisages setting up forty or fifty Boards for England and Wales and thus the
number of top posts in Public Health will again be very drastically reduced.
H.L. SETTLE
Medical Officer of Health
and Director of Welfare Services
November, 1968
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