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2
Public Health Department,
Wood Green, N.22.
August 11th, 1950.
To the Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors,
of the Borough of Wood Green.
Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I beg to present to you my Annual Report as Medical Officer
of Health for the year 1949.
For the first time for over forty years, the Annual Report this
year includes no account of the Maternity and Child Welfare Services
provided in the Borough, these being now, like the School Medical
Service, the responsibility of the Middlesex County Council. This
unfortunate and regrettable division of responsibility for the environmental
and the personal health services between two separate local
government authorities, is now an accomplished fact, but there is
still contact maintained between the two branches of the work, in so
far as the Medical Officer of Health of the Borough is for 40 per cent,
of his time responsible for the environmental services, while for the
remaining 60 per cent, of his time, as area Medical Officer under the
County Council, he is in charge of the personal health services.
So far as the general health of the community is concerned, the
year 1949 has been uneventful. Infectious disease has been rather
more prevalent than in the previous year, but in spite of the increased
prevalence, no deaths occurred from the commoner infections. For
the second year in succession there were no cases of diphtheria, and
for the tenth year in succession, no deaths occurred from this disease.
The Birth Rate fell from 15.1 per 1,000 of population in 1948 to
13.6 in 1949, but the Death Rate at 11.9 was appreciably higher than
that for 1948, which was 9.8, the lowest recorded in the Borough.
The Infantile Mortality Rate of 25 per 1,000 live births was the lowest
on record in Wood Green, the previous lowest being 27 in 1945.