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PREFACE
To the Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors of the
Metropolitan Borough of Woolwich.
Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have pleasure in submitting the Fifty-fourth Annual Report on the health and
sanitary conditions of the Borough of Woolwich. It is compiled in accordance with
the outline of the Ministry of Health.
On the Registrar General's estimates there has been a reduction in the home
population of 2,100 during the last two years.
With regard to vital statistics, the year 1954 was a year of new low records so
far as the Borough of Woolwich was concerned. There were fewer births than in
any year since 1945, and the birth rate of 13.5 was the lowest since 1933. The
corrected birth rate was 13 3 compared with 15.2 for London and also for England
and Wales.
Similarly, the year saw a reduction compared with the previous year's figure
of 126 in the total Woolwich net deaths registered, and this was reflected in the
death rate for the year (9-6) which is the lowest ever recorded in Woolwich. The
previous lowest was 9 9 in 1923 and in the years 1926 and 1935 it was 10-2.
The adjusted death rate for Woolwich was 9.5, compared with 10 9 for London,
and 114 for England and Wales.
Slightly less than half of the total deaths occurred in hospital. Once again
diseases of the heart and other circulatory diseases accounted for a large proportion
of the total deaths. Most of the remaining deaths were from cancer, and other
principal causes of death were pneumonia, bronchitis and diseases of the nervous
system.
There was again a reduction in the number of deaths from tuberculosis, this
being a continuation of the post-war trend in this disease. Whereas at the end of the
last war nearly 100 Woolwich deaths each year were classified as deaths from
tuberculosis, last year there were only 21 fatal cases. This gave a percentage of
tuberculosis deaths against all deaths in the Borough of 14, compared with six per
cent. in 1944.
It is pleasing to report the remarkable decrease in the number of infant deaths;
only 37 being reported in the Borough last year compared with 48 the previous year,
and as many as 102 in 1938. In that year the infant death rate per 1,000 net births
was 50; in 1953 it had dropped to 22.9 and in 1954 it has fallen to the remarkable
figure of 18.1. Of the 37 deaths occurring during the year, 23 of the children died
under the age of one week. Many were cases where owing to congenital defects the
child could not have been expected to live.
The Borough had a quiet year so far as infectious diseases were concerned,
and there is little which calls for comment. Notifications of scarlet fever were again
reduced. There were several more cases of puerperal pyrexia notified, mainly
because of the revised definition of the disease, and the increase in the number of
maternity beds available in hospitals in the Borough.
I am pleased to report that after the relatively high number of notifications of
poliomyelitis received during the years since the end of the last war, for the second
year in succession the Borough has experienced little trouble in this respect.
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