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to 26 per 1,000 for 1950. It was remarked by your Medical
Officer of Health at that time, Dr. C. A. Patten, that "your
infant mortality rate reflected a sad waste of child life and should
be dealt with by improved hygienic surroundings and increased
knowledge of infant care and feeding." The reduction to the present
figure shows that his words were prophetic and his advice of the
best.
Secondly, his reference to the need for a crematorium in the
year 1900 in Ealing is one which might well be in the forefront of
our health programme to-day but for the severe restrictions upon
building and development of all kinds. It may well be that even
with our present restrictions this is a matter which will have to be
given consideration at some time in the not distant future.
The transfer of functions to the County Council has left the
Borough with most of the matters that were dealt with at the
commencement of the Borough's incorporation and it is curious
that this turn of the wheel should have put the Borough Medical
Services back to a point from where they started. The fundamental
nature of housing, sewage, water supplies and infectious disease
still remains as firmly as ever the rock upon which preventive
medicine is founded. The ancillary services, particularly among
those which come under the National Health Service Act, are in
the main treatment auxiliaries and are inevitably more and more
linked with social services as distinct from preventive health
services.
In this report an attempt has been made to cover the whole
field of health services in the Borough, in order that you may know
what is being done in the fields which are no longer under your
direct control but which nevertheless play an important part in
the services available to the ordinary citizen.
Great progress has been made during the year in the development
of your Clean Food Campaign and the steady growth of the
work is continuing, as it was begun, namely, as an educational
function directed at the food handler throughout the whole of the
food trade. Visits have been made by a number of bodies to the
Borough to see the work that is being done here and although it
is only two years since the scheme commenced we have made
great strides and are building up on a solid foundation of public
knowledge and appreciation of our aims.
One of the functions left to the Local Sanitary Authority
is that of health education and I am hoping that we shall be able
to extend this work in the future. There can be no doubt that by
the education of the public we shall achieve our best results. Much
still remains to be done and the repercussions of the division of
the services by the National Health Service Act are still being felt.