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3
COUNTY BOROUGH OF CROYDON.
ANNUAL REPORT
of the
MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH
and
SCHOOL MEDICAL OFFICER,
For the Year 1924.
I beg to submit to the Council my report on the health and
sanitary circumstances of the Borough during the year 1924.
The year was in general a healthy one, and the records compare
favourably with those of previous years, with the sole exception
of 1923, with its happy experience of an unprecedentedly low
incidence of disease, both in Croydon and in the country as a
whole.
The following pages will indicate the variety of directions in
which expansion of Public Health activity has been experienced
during the year. Among these may be noted the unification of
the work of health visitors; the growth in the work of the sanitary
department, in regard particularly to housing inspection and to
food supervision, but also in other respects; the completion of
negotiations for the extension of Cheam Sanatorium; the provision
of new premises to house a number of clinics together with an
enlarged Sick Nursery; the approval of schemes for occupational
work at the sanatorium, and for tuberculosis care work—both
initiated during 1924, although reaching their final stages early in
1925; the extension of maternity and child welfare work in regard
to items referred to in the body of the report; the opening of an
Occupation Centre by the Mental Deficiency Committee; the
adoption of a scheme, jointly with the Governors of the Croydon
General Hospital, for a public laboratory on an extended scale.
These various developments are now in process of being
brought into effect. The heavy work involved has been rendered
possible only by the willing and whole-hearted co-operation of all
sections of the staff, of whose ungrudging assistance I wish to
make the fullest acknowledgment.
Attention may be drawn to an analysis, in the section relating
to housing, of the incidence of disease in a group of working-class
dwellings subjected to house-to-house inspectior; also to an investigation
of the incidence and other aspects of adenoids set out in the
school medical section of the report.
H. P. NEWSHOLME,
Medical Officer of Health.
May, 1925.