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expenditure on prevention of disease is only 4½ per cent, of the
total cost of sickness. In this connection a modest experiment
has been carried out this Autumn by offering innoculation with a
cold vaccine to volunteer members of the Council's staff in an
effort to reduce the sickness rate during the winter months from
coryza and other minor respiratory infections. Careful records
are being kept and the experiment will be reviewed in due course
but in the meantime it can be stated that 129 members of the
staff availed themselves of this opportunity and some 377 injections
have been performed.
Ealing has been a Borough since 1901, and as the Local
Sanitary Authority deals with environmental hygiene, supervision
of food stuffs, the control, prevention and treatment of infectious
disease; as the Welfare Authority, administers Maternity and
Child Welfare Services, including the Midwifery Service ; and as
an excepted district administers, as agents of the Local Education
Authority, certain of the School Health Services.
The National Health Service Act brings changes in the
administration of these services and the personal services pass
to the County Council who are now designated the Local Health
Authority, and your hospitals administered by the Joint Committee
pass to the North West Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board.
The effect of these changes which date from the 5th July, 1948,
will be that Ealing reverts to its duties of Local Sanitary Authority
of the latter part of the last century, and it would appear that
there is to be a complete severing of the Health Services from
Local Government Units as such.
It will be interesting to compare the work done during the
last year with that effected during the next few years.
I have the honour to be
Your obedient servant,
REGINALD LEADER,
Medical Officer of Health.
Town Hall.,
Ealing, W.5.
31s/ March, 1948.