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THE ANNUAL REPORT OF THE MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH
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 1963, my fifteenth
and probably the last to be submitted to the Authority as at present constituted
in view of the creation of the London Borough of Bexley under the London Government
Act, 1963. I have worked in the area for eighteen years, having been
appointed to Bexley in 1946.
Eighteen years is not a long time in the life of a local authority (although
it does represent a substantial slice of the working life of an individual) but
it is long enough to warrant a comparison of the health circumstances of the area
at the beginning and end of this period.
The year 1946 witnessed the beginning of the transition from war to peace.
The strain of bombardment of the civilian population was lifted and the reintegration
of family life was assisted by the return of evacuated children and
by an acceleration of the rate of demobilisation of the Armed Forces. Housing
circumstances had been seriously affected by bombing and the suspension of new
building, and represented the most serious of the problems facing the Urban District
at that time. Difficulties in the process of resettlement in civilian
life inevitably occurred as a result of the enforced separation, over a number
of years, of husbands and wives, children and parents; food shortages remained
and in many ways the discipline of the wartime years continued.
Strangely enough, in spite of these vicissitudes the general health of the
community, as evidenced by the vital statistics of the area remained good. The
infant mortality rate (i.e. the number of children dying in the first year of
life per 1,000 live births), a very sensitive index of social conditions, was
37 per 1,000 live births in 1946, a favourable rate compared with previous years.
In 1941 the rate was 59.7 per 1,000. This rate has continued to fall and, in
1963, was 14.73 per 1,000 and, even allowing for the inevitable fluctuations
which are expected when dealing with small numbers, it may be said with some
justification that there has been a downward trend since the end of the war which
is statistically significant. This has, undoubtedly, been due to improved
environmental conditions including housing, an advance in child health services
including health education and the discovery of the chamotherapeutic drugs as
well as penicillin and the other antibiotics which have greatly simplified the
control of the childhood infections.
The maternal mortality rate (the number of deaths of mothers in childbirth
per 1,000 total births) had been consistently low and it is pleasant to report
that there have been no maternal deaths due to childbirth, in the Urban District
for the past three years. This improvement can be related to improved obstetric
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