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10
PREFACE.
To the Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors,
of the Metropolitan Borough of Woolwich.
Me. Mayor and Gentlemen,
I herewith present my Ninth Annual Report on the
Health of the Borough, including the Eighteenth Annual Report
on the Health of Plumstead.
The public health continues to improve, and I wish to call
special attention to the great decline in infant mortality, from
144 in 1898 to 82 last year. The efforts made to reduce the
unnecessarily numerous deaths of infants are described under
"Notification of Zymotic Enteritis," "Infants' Milk Depot," and
"Women Sanitary Inspectors' Report"(Miss Fitz Gerald's
Report).
The remarkable success attending the Milk Depot is
shown by the fact that during the three years that the Milk
Depot has been in existence the death rate of children fed at
the Depot was only 81, which compares with a similarly calculated
death rate for hand-fed children of 198 per 1000 births.
References are made in the Report to the extravagance
resulting from providing for institution treatment of such
diseases as Scarlet Fever, while making no provision for the cost
of home treatment. On the other hand an attempt has been
made to express in £ s. d. the economy of sanatorium treatment
of Consumption(see Scarlet Fever and Phthisis).