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7
To the Chairman and Members of the
Chislehurst and Sidcup Urban District Council.
Madam Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,
This survey of the work of the Public Health Department
during 1963 is written at a time of upheaval in London's Local
Government. In addressing the report to the Chairman and
Members of the Chislehurst and Sidcup Urban District Council, I
am at once conscious of a feeling of regret that this is probably
the last annual report that I shall have the honour to present to
the Council, which, it now seems certain, will no longer be in
existence when the report for 1964 is completed.
The processes of growth and change which brought the Urban
District into being in April 1934, have now conspired to bring
about its dissolution, after a comparatively short life of 31 years,
in the course of which it had weathered many storms, including one
global conflict. In the field of Public Health these years have seen
remarkable progress, and the Council can look with pride on its
own record of achievement which will have laid the foundations
on which the future health of the district will be built.
This is an appropriate opportunity to glance back over the
three decades and recall the advances that have taken place during
these years. Outstanding has been the improvement in infant
mortality, which has been cut by more than half since 1934, and
the improvement in child health in general. This, in turn, is linked
with the dramatic decline in the more serious infectious diseases.
Diphtheria which was responsible in 1935 for 60 cases and three
deaths, has not occurred in the district since 1954; Scarlet Fever
has lost the virulence which once made it so greatly feared; and
the challenge of anterior poliomyelitis in the post-war years now
seems to have been successfully met and overcome. Tuberculosis,
which in 1935 was the fourth largest cause of death in the district,
has shown a similarly gratifying decline.
In the field of hygiene, the bed bug, which was reported in
some 140 premises in 1935, is now unlikely to be seen by the
general public outside a Natural History Museum! All dwelling
houses in the district now receive a piped water supply from the
mains, and the number of cesspools in use has been considerably
reduced, though not eliminated. Much patient, and I believe,
profitable work has been carried out to raise the standards of food
hygiene generally, and in particular that of the premises in which
food is handled; and in the last years an attack has been launched
on the pollution of the atmosphere which has for too long been
a source of grime and dirt to plague the housewife, as well as a