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5
Mr. Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors,
In presenting my Annual Report for the year 1957 I
would like to draw attention to certain items of special
interest.
No case of Diphtheria occurred in 1957, and approximately
65% of children were Immunised against this disease
in their first year.
An interesting food poisoning outbreak occurred at
one school which in spite of exhaustive follow-up gave no
clue as to the responsible organism. We were forced to
the conclusion that not only may Poliomyelitis be spread
by food contamination, but other viruses with short term
gastro intestinal effects may also be responsible for
some of our food poisoning troubles.
A graph has been prepared showing how the Influenza
of 1957 affected the school population attendances and I
am much indebted to head teachers for their assistance in
its compilation. Fortunately the epidemic was comparatively
mild and only affected seriously certain elderly people,
who contracted pneumonia.
In one sense the year may be regarded as medically
historic in that we commenced immunisation against Poliomyelitis
for the first time. The public response would
have been far greater had there not been an unfortunate
incident in the American use of soma vaccine which had
not been subjected to sufficiently stringent safety tests,
but much was learned from this and there is every reason
to believe that our campaign for protection of children
in Ealing, will, be received, as are most of our health
service facilities, by the great majority of the population.
There is every reason to hope that like Tuberculosis,
the old enemy Polio' is on the way out. Another interesting
facet of this work is the close co-operation we
are now receiving from General Practitioners in basic
preventive medicine - never before, in my experience of
over 30 years in public health, has there been such close
association with the local authorities of general practitioners
in the prevention of disease.
Another landmark in the field of preventive medicine
was the inauguration of the Clean Air Act, and in the
body of the report details are given as to the position
in Ealing. There is no doubt that this Act will take many
years to implement fully over the whole country, but only
by every Authority doing its fair share shall we arrive