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2
REPORT OF THE MEDICAL OFFICER
OF HEALTH.
To the Chairman and Members of the Urban District Council
of Harrow.
Mr. Chairman, Mrs. Leech and Gentlemen,
I beg to submit the Annual Report on the Health and Sanitary
Circumstances of the District for the year 1940.
By the provisions of the Sanitary Officers Regulations, 1935,
the medical officer of health of a county district is required as
soon as practicable after the 31st day of December in each year
to make an annual report to the local authority for the year ending
on that date on the sanitary circumstances, the sanitary administration
and the vital statistics of the district. Towards the end
of each calendar year a circular is received from the Ministry of
Health outlining the form the report shall take. This circular
usually states that the statistics to be provided by the Registrar
General will be available early in the year and urges medical officers
of health, particularly in view of the fact that the report is the
less in value the more distant the time it is presented from the
period to which it relates, to make every effort to publish it early.
In point of fact it had become customary not even to expect the
Registrar General's statistics, let alone to be in a position to
publish the report by the time the Ministry hoped to see it issued.
Last year, after receiving this guidance early in 1940, a subsequent
circular was received from the Ministry suggesting that any
issued should be an interim report only, being confined to essential
and urgent matters which had affected the public health during
the year. A report on the usual lines was submitted, but because
of the very late receipt of the Registrar General's statistics only
very belatedly. Whatever value the report possesses it would
seem that as an article of record it is the more rather than the
less advisable that it should appear during a period when changes
which are of public health significance are, or might be, at their
maximum. The records of the public health activities of a stable
community will show from year to year a steady progress effected;
those of a rapidly growing community may present more spectacular
features, but no changes in peace-time can be of the magnitude
of some of the social upheavals which have taken place in so very
many districts this last year, and yet this is the time when it is
suggested, with a view to economy of paper, that the annual
reports should be curtailed. Issued on the 26th March, Circular
2314 of the Ministry of Health requested the Council to direct
that the Annual Report of the Medical Officer of Health for 1940
be prepared on the lines indicated the previous year. Again it
was felt that the economies of time and of paper which might