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ANNUAL RETORT
OF THE
MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH
FOR THE YEAR 1955
June, 1956
To the Chairman and Members of the
Ruislip-Northwood Urban District Council:
Madam Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen
My Annual Report for 1955 contains the statistics which
indicate the state of health of the District These bare figures
are in effect the skeleton of the work of the Public Health
Department; to get a clear picture of the whole body of the
work it is necessary to clothe these figures with a covering
represented by the vital human relationships experienced by the
various sections of the department it must always be remembered
that preventive medicine ultimately concerns the individual
The work of a Public Health Department is essentially team
work - the effectiveness of the machine as a whole depends on
the efficient functioning of each component part - I am very
glad to say that throughout the year there has been the greatest
possible co-operation by all the members of the staff of the
Department. I would like therefore to place on record my
appreciation of the work of the Chief Sanitary Inspector and
the other members of the Department,
The vital statistics for the District are set out in the
body of the report in the usual manner. The mid-year population
for 1955 was very slightly up on the previous year and now
stands at 72,700 and it is estimated that there were 21,332
inhabited dwellings. The principal figures call for little
comment - the corrected birth rate of 13 02 and the corrected
death rate of 9 4 compare with the national rates of 15 and
11.7 respectively. The infant mortality rate for the District
of 22.83 shews a very slight increase over the figure for 1954
but is still lower than the national rate of 24.9 In this
connection it should be remembered that comparatively small
numbers are being dealt with; consequently considerable
variation in the infantile death rate can be brought about by
quite small changes in the number of deaths. These deaths of
infants under one year are a challenge to preventive medicine,
but as time goes on it is found that more and more of them are
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