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3
August, 1950.
Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have the honour to submit my Annual Report to you for
the year 1949.
The focusing of interest upon the growing incidence of food
poisonings throughout the country has led to a development of a
scheme of food protection in Ealing. This is aimed at ensuring
that every food handler in the Borough knows of the dangers that
lie in carelessness when food is served or prepared. The success
of the courses of lectures organised for this purpose has been a
tribute to the energy and enthusiasm of the Sanitary Inspection
Department, and we are sure that 1950 will show further strides
in this educational and preventive work. The success of this
Ealing scheme can be largely attributed to the judgment and
sound advice of your former Chief Sanitary Inspector, Mr. G.
Stevens. His long experience of conditions in Ealing was the
basic consideration in devising the scheme and we are grateful to
him for setting us on the right road. The policy adopted cannot
be short term and it may be some years before the full benefits
of the work being done will show, but our continual programmes
on educational lines must inevitably give results, and to those in
closest touch with the work, some of these results are already
apparent.
February 1950 saw the end of the long association of the
Borough of Ealing with the Clayponds Isolation Hospital, as the
Medical Officer of Health was no longer required to act as Medical
Superintendent. I have no hesitation in asserting, as a result of
my considerable experience of work with every type of local
authority, that the dissociation of local health services from the
control of any hospital beds is the most serious injury that has
been inflicted upon the health services of the country in this
generation. It may well lead to the disintegration of local authority
control of preventive medicine, and to those who have given a
lifetime to its service, this may well appear to be a matter of
serious concern. It has happened to dental services and as the
local authority representatives appear to be unable to negotiate
salary scales for medical staff, there may be no other course open,
if complete destruction is to be avoided, but the absorption of the
preventive services into some other side of the National Health
Service Scheme. In this way the local authorities are gradually
dissipating services carefully built up by their predecessors and
the machine of central administration swallows and slowly digests
into an amorphous mass, completely lacking in any individuality
or local interest, the whole structure of local preventive and curative