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2.
ANNUAL REPORT
of the
MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH
for the year 1964
To The Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors of the
Borough of Hendon.
Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen,
The Annual Report of the Medical Officer of Health cannot be
submitted in its final form until confirmation of a number of
statistics is received from the Registrar General. However, in
view of the fact that the Borough of Hendon will no longer exist
after the 1st April, 1964 I have prepared a report based on
information now available (Part I), and a further report (Part II)
will be submitted at a later date.
The Reorientation of Local Government towards the London
Borough of Barnet has allowed no time for those investigations
which add to the interest of the Medical Officer of Health's
report, and the report is therefore necessarily brief.
In the decade since I came to Hendon there has been much
progress in Public Health. The most noticeable highlight has been
the disappearance of poliomyelitis, not only of poliomyelitis but
also of the fear which many parents suffered of this disease.
The air is now much cleaner than a few years ago, and the
green smogs have been replaced by white mists.
Standards have been raised in food hygiene and especially in
personal hygiene, which is now so much improved that outbreaks of
food borne disease are more likely to be due to faulty processes
rather than to the failure of individual personal hygiene.
In the ten-year period housing- has improved enormously, but it
is not without some feeling of nostalgia that one has watched the
demolition of many old cottages, so that few if any of the quaint
cottages of the eighteenth century now remain in Hendon.
On the debit side, lung cancer has increased and is still
increasing, with its frightening toll of men in their fifth and
sixth decades. Road traffic accidents are now responsible for more
unhappiness than infectious disease; and we still sit back and
watch the progress made in America towards the prevention of dental
decay by the fluoridation of drinking water.
In Hendon I have been fortunate in having an excellent staff,
and an interested Public Health Committee, and I shall watch with
interest the progress of the London Borough of Barnet.
I have the honour to be,
Mr. Mayor, Ladies & Gentlemen,
Your obedient servant,
J.L. PATTON
Medical Officer of Health