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in 1947, 16 years ago. Notifications of whooping cough were 77.
The pattern of health problems developing today drives home
the importance of Health Education as a vital part of local authority
Health Services. Two important factors in health education
are:
(a) Impact on young people - and this must involve co-operation
between parents, teachers and medical staff; and
(b) Timing.
(a) There have recently been produced some excellent films on
smoking and on sex education, and several of our Head Teachers
have expressed a wish that we should show these films in the schools.
As a preliminary to this, meetings have been arranged with
parents and staff. This affords the parents particularly an opportunity
of seeing the films and of discussing the appropriateness
of their use in the schools concerned.
Obviously if the parents have full knowledge of the instruction
being given in school they will be in a much stronger position to
add their influence to that of the teachers and the medical staff
and I hope that a greater measure of success may be achieved.
(b) The advantage gained by timing in health education was illustrated
when, during the recent Aberdeen typhoid epidemic every school
in Wood Green, secondary, junior and infants, was visited by a
Medical Officer, Health Visitor or Public Health Inspector and a
very brief but very downright talk given on the method of spread
of typhoid fever, which is the same as that in dysentery and
poliomyelitis. The importance of proper hand washing after visiting
the toilet and before eating and preparing food was driven home.
In every case the children showed a lively interest and the
school staff were not only welcoming but very appreciative. At
the same time a display of posters, leaflets etc, was staged in
the Town Hall.
I need hardly emphasise the increasing amount of work falling
upon the Public Health Inspectors particularly in the field of
smoke control and housing, but it has been a good year of work,
thanks to the willing effort of all concerned.
With the coming merger of the personal and environmental
health services in the new Borough of Haringey, the close and
friendly co-operation of the staffs of the Borough and the County
Area is particularly fortunate. Particularly is this so in regard
to care of the aged and in health education
To the great sorrow of his staff and, I am sure, of the Council,
Dr. Harvey, after a year s sick leave, resigned his appointment
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