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To the Chairman and Members of the Urban District Council of
Crayford
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have the honour to submit my Annual Report for the year
1957
As in previous years, in attempting to assess the health of
the Urban District it is necessary to consider the vital statistics
for the area The infant mortality rate for 1957 was 34 0
per 1,000 live births, compared with 23 1 in 1956 and a rate for
England and Wales of 23.1. An analysis of the figures of deaths
shows that the increase was due to causes not easily controllable
and although the new rate is rather disappointing, there does
not appear to be any reason for pessimism There was one maternal
death giving a maternal mortality rate of 1.9 per 1,000 total
live and stillbirths For the eighth year there has not been a case
of diphtheria in the Urban District. The standardised birth rate
remained practically stationary at 15 77 per 1,000 of the population
compared with a rate of 16 1 per 1,000 for England and Wales,
whilst the standardised death rate is 12,45 compared with 11 5
for the country as a whole
There is nothing in these figures to warrant either concern
or undue complacency. When one observes the great changes wrought
in our civilisation by the industrial, social, educational and
scientific developments of the past 50 years and their profound
influence on our whole way of life, one cannot help feeling that
the yardsticks used in the past to measure the health of a community
need to be interpreted with great caution Designed as
they originally were for conditions of widespread poverty and
disease and the absence of medical care they served, in bygone
years, not only as a measure of environmental hazards but, also,
as a spur to their amelioration Nowadays, however, having overcome
the gross hazards of environment we can turn our attention
to the more insidious and subtle ones which remain, as well as
to the new hazards which are constantly arising as a result of
the application of scientific developments as, for example, in
the field of nuclear physics.
A good example of the subjection of present-day vital statistics
to the high power of the microscope is afforded by the study
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