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ANNUAL REPORT
OF THE
MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH
FOR THE YEAR 1961
July, 1962.
To the Chairman and Members of the
Ruislip-Northwood Urban District Council.
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Apart from the expected increase in the incidence of measles the year has been
comparatively uneventful, and there has been no happening worthy of special note. Once
again, there has been no case of diphtheria, and once again no case of poliomyelitis. This
is a great encouragement to those working in Public Health and Preventive Medicine as the
absence of these diseases is a measure of the success achieved. In this work, no news is
good news, but the success achieved in itself causes more difficulty, as it becomes more
and more difficult to get people to accept measures to protect them against diseases which
to them are apparently non-existent.
It is usual for infants to be offered protection against diphtheria, whooping cough,
tetanus, poliomyelitis and smallpox. The present tendency is to combine as many of these
as possible, so that the number of injections required is cut down to the minimum. The
development of a poliomyelitis vaccine which can be taken by the mouth is a great step
forward and this material has now an appropriate place in the schedule of immunisation
procedures. The continued success of the immunisation programme depends not only on the
giving of theinitial series of immunisations, but also on the proper spacing of the boost
procedures. The closure of infectious diseases hospitals and wards up and down the country
over the last few years is perhaps the greatest single tribute to the work that has been done in
the control of infectious diseases.
The infant mortality rate (17. 56) is slightly down on that for the previous year, and is
below the national figure (21.4) which is itself the lowest national rate ever recorded. The
causes of the infant deaths are set out in the body of the report, and it will be seen that they
represent a hard core of conditions which are, as yet, not fully understood, and therefore
not preventable. Much research work is still being carried out all over the world into this
aspect of infant mortality, but it is a very difficult subject and the results are slow to
develop.
Heart and arterial diseases and cancer are the conditions responsible for the majority of
adult deaths - infections are no longer a problem in this connection, as they are comparatively
easily controlled by the modern antibiotic drugs. Here, again, intensive research work is
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