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6
PREFACE.
To the Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors
of the Metropolitan Borough of Woolwich.
Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have the honour to submit the Thirty-Eighth Annual Report on the health
of the Metropolitan Borough of Woolwich.
The Report, in accordance with the instructions of the Council follows the
outline indicated by the Ministry of Health, in Circular 1728, in order to ensure
uniformity in the presentation of Annual Reports of Medical Officers throughout
the country.
The principal vital statistics for the year are as follows:—the birth rate was
13.6, a decrease of 0.6 on that of 1937 ; the infantile mortality rate was 50, compared
with 40 in the previous year and 59 in 1936 ; the neo-natal mortality rate
"(deaths under four weeks per thousand births) was 23.8 as against 17.41 the previous
year. The number of maternal deaths was 1, the rate for the year per thousand
births being 0.47, as against 1.35 in 1937. This is the lowest maternal mortality
rate this Borough has ever known.
The population of the Borough is estimated by the Registrar General to be
150,900, an increase of 1,500 on 1937. This is the total population and includes
non-civilians, and it is on this figure that the vital statistics of the Borough are
calculated.
Progress in health education is reported fully in Section IV. The Council
co-operated whole-heartedly in the second half of the National Health Campaign
during the first three months of 1938, as they had done in the first half at the end
of 1937. There is every reason to believe that the Campaign did much to stimulate
public interest in the Council's health services.
The Chief Sanitary Inspector and his staff have had a busy year—doing good
solid work in environmental hygiene—in the improving of housing conditions, in
the abatement of nuisances, in food control, and in preventing the spread of infectious
disease.