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To the Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors of the Borough of
Dagenham.
Madam Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I present herewith my report on the health of Dagenham for
the year 1948. This must be regarded as a historical year in
the annals of Public Health, July 5 th being the date on which
certain of the services hitherto provided by the Corporation passed
to the control of the County Council. It is difficult to differentiate
accurately between the County and Corporation activities, therefore
no attempt has been made to draw a hard and fast line to divide
the functions of the Authorities concerned. Indeed, I would go
further and suggest that our endeavour should be to knit all the
agencies into one homogeneous whole, the target being to raise
the level of health.
I would here invite attention to some of the vital statistics.
The Infant mortality rate has touched a new low level, 29.04 per
thousand live births compared with 34 for England and Wales
and 31 for London. The general death rate was 6.15 (England
and Wales 10.8). The fall in births is shown by the fact that
the birth rate was 19.15 in 1948 as against 23.71 in 1947.
Now that the full complement of medical staff has been
attained, it has become possible to re-distribute the duties entailed
by the maternity and child welfare and the school health services.
Each member of the medical staff is now engaged in both these
services. Where possible the same medical officer who is in charge
of infant welfare centres is attached to the schools which serve
the same areas, thus preserving continuity of supervision.
health Consideration has been given to the
centres provision of health centres and certain
sites in the Borough have been earmarked
for this purpose. The guiding principle in selecting sites has been
that each centre should give facilities for approximately 10,000 of
the population and that it should not be necessary to travel more
than half a mile to the centre. The sites earmarked are at the
moment ten in number, but with the development of building
estates some modification will be necessary. Building restrictions
at the present time have prevented any actual construction from
taking place. It will be appreciated that there should be no confusion
between existing combined treatment centres and proposed
health centres.
CARE of mothers Fourteen weekly and two fortnightly
AND YOUNG ante-natal sessions are held at six clinic
CHILDREN. buildings, these latter are at Ashton
Gardens, Chadwell Heath, Becontree
Avenue, Ballards Road, Rush Green, Frizlands Lane and Ford