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To the Chairman and Members of the Crayford Urban District Council
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have the honour to submit my Annual Report for the year 1958
which is prepared on the lines suggested by the Minister of Health.
The Registrar-General's estimate of the mid year population for
the Urban District is 30,280 compared with 29,980 in 1957. Generallyspeaking,
on the basis of the statistical information available, the
health of the Urban District was well maintained. The standardised
death rate was 11.5 per thousand of the home population compared with
11.7 for the whole of England and Wales. The birth rate at 17.03 per
thousand compares favourably with that for the country as a whole (16.4).
Eight infants died during the first year of life giving an infant
mortality rate of 14.7 per thousand live births, which is the lowest
rate recorded in the District since 1954, when the rate was 10.1. The
infant mortality rate for England and Wales was 22.6 per thousand. As
in previous years, a substantial proportion of the deaths were
associated with prematurity and congenital malformation, over which
no significant degree of control is possible at present. Much research
is, however, going on in regard to the possible influence of german
measles and other virus illnesses as they affect the growing foetus
during the early months of pregnancy. There were no maternal deaths
due to childbirth.
Deaths from tuberculosis numbered 3 as against 1 in 1957Deaths
due to malignant disease, in general, showed a slight decrease
over the previous year and cancer of the lung caused 13 deaths compared
with 15 in 1957. Deaths attributed to coronary disease numbered 50
compared with 42 in 1957 and 45 in 1956. For the ninth year in
succession there has not been a single case of diphtheria in the Urban
District. There were no cases of poliomyelitis during the year.
Twenty-one new cases of tuberculosis were notified during 1958 as against
seventeen during the previous year. The year under review was a measles
year and a considerable epidemic commenced in September and continued
into the early summer of 1959. During 1958 267 cases were notified but
only one case was treated in hospital.
Infectious diseases throughout the ages have shown a rise and fall
in incidence due to many and complicated factors which are not fully
understood. This matter is, however, of great significance from the
administrative point of view as well as from the standpoint of the health
of the community. As a result of the provision of pure water supplies
in the middle of the 19th century, the enteric and diarrhoeal diseases
generally were largely overcome. Scarlet fever, which in the 19th
century and early part of this century was one of the main killing
diseases, is, nowadays, a disease of little importance. Smallpox has
been largely overcome by stringent supervision at sea and air ports and
2.