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16
inspectors, health visitors and other social workers are confronted
daily with an accumulating amount of unhappiness, frustration and
despair due to the necessity of sharing of households. Since the
end of the last war there has been a substantial increase in the
number of families. Due to lack of housing accommodation, we
see daily the great physical and mental strain borne by young
families who are growing up in households not their own, and the
equally great strain borne by the older people who have to share
the accommodation.
Of the many duties and responsibilities of the Medical Officer
of Health, the chief is still the prevention of epidemic disease,
and, of the epidemic diseases not yet brought under control, those
that now give rise to the greatest anxiety are tuberculosis and
poliomyelitis.
So great has been the success of the campaign for protection
against diphtheria that we now have a generation of young parents
who may never have seen or heard of a case of the disease among
their own or their neighbours' children, and are more afraid of the
illnesses they know than of diphtheria. The very success of
immunisation is tending to make parents wonder if it is still
necessary to have their babies immunised. The object of the
campaign remains the same—to secure the immunisation of at least
75 per cent, of babies, and the elimination of the disease depends
on the maintenance of a sufficiently high percentage of immunised
children in the community.
It is now common knowledge that people are living longer to day
than they used to do—so much so, that increased longevity has now
become a matter for concern rather than for gratification. For
instance, the provision of accommodation for old people has now
become one of the most serious problems confronting hospital and
housing authorities, and the length of life of pensioners is proving a
serious drain on the national exchequer and local superannuation
funds.
The provision of adequate housing and the prevention of
pollution of the atmosphere are two of the most important public
health problems of our time, and reports dealing with these two
subjects are to be found in the section of the report dealing with
Sanitary Circumstances. This section of the Report has been
largely re-arranged and in great measure re-written by Mr. B. J.
Ashcroft, who took over the duties of Senior Sanitary Inspector
in January, 1953.