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3
Turning to the vital statistics, one records that the population
is still on the increase, chiefly owing to the developing of the
housing estate at St. Paul's Cray. Incidentally, this area is at the
moment badly supplied with medical services, but is scheduled
to have the first Health Centre in the County—which should
prove a great asset. The birth rate was 16.5, compared with 16.7
for the rest of the country.
The death rate was 10.7, and the infant mortality rate was
21.5, compared with 19.9 for the previous year and a rate of 32
for the country as a whole.
The continued low mortality rate, which is not restricted to
Orpington alone, is due to many factors, some known, some conjectured
and some unknown. It is not unreasonable to take some
of the credit of these lowered rates to the work of Health Departments
and those District Councils who have, for the past three
decades, been so active in the field of preventive medicine. Full
employment and all that follows it is, no doubt, another of the
main factors in the uplift of the health of the community.
Infectious diseases were most notable for another outbreak
of infantile paralysis, to which I shall refer more fully in
Section F.
A census is due to be taken in 1951—the last census being in
1931, the war years intervening—and only then shall we be able
to learn of the real social circumstances of the district; whether
full housing use is being made of existing premises or whether
the large waiting list is, in fact, a true indication of the housing
need of this and other districts ; we shall learn, too, the true
relationship between disease and age grouping of your population—all
facts which can be obtained only by a census of the
population.
At the end of the year Downe House, at which the Public
Health Department had been located for some years, was vacated,
and the Department was transferred to temporary premises
behind the Civic Buildings pending a decision as to its final
location. In addition, accommodation for the District Organiser
of Domestic Help and the Deputy Superintendent Health Visitor
was found in the same building.
In accordance with my procedure of last year, I have divided
the report into the following sections :