View report page

1
REPORT OF THE MEDICAL OFFICER
OF HEALTH.
To the Chairman and Members of the Urban District Counril of
Harrow.
Mr. Chairman, Mrs. Roberts and Gentlemen,
I beg to submit the Annual Report on the Health and Sanitary
Circumstances of the District for the year 1941.
As contrasted with the figures relating to pre-war years the chief
differences in the vital statistics for this year are a rise in the death
rate, though this is the same figure as for 1940, a further rise in the
infant mortality rate, and an increase in the incidence and in the death
rate from tuberculosis. Reference is made in the body of the report to
each of these points.
In line with the rest of the country, this district has experienced an
increase in the incidence of the infections caused by foods. There was
a sharp rise in the number of notifications of enteric disease, almost all
of them being of para B. infection. Some, probably much, of the
increased incidence of the illness in the country is considered to have
been due to the ingestion of contaminated synthetic cream, much of
which is composed of a mixture of flour, sugar and water, a vegetable
oil and an egg powder. In many of the local cases no history of the
intake of such comestible could be obtained. The great increase in the
incidence of such an infection in which, however, there could be found
no connecting link, the cases being separated geographically and in time
suggests the possibility of the organisms being much more widely distributed
than formerly but that only a proportion of those into whose
systems they have entered have reacted by a recognisable clinical attack.
Such a risk is one to be expected as arising directly out of war conditions
where the demands of the Services and air raid precautions lead to the
substituting of the skilled staff by those not educated up to sound
hygienic standards, to work having to be done in conditions such as of
diminished lighting, and to damaged plant not being capable of being
replaced. Dysentery notifications also were markedly commoner this
year. Most of these, however, related to children who, while in-patients
at the orthopaedic hospital contracted an infection with the Sonne
organism. Notifications of food poisoning, as such, remained low.
Not all the problems to be faced after the war will arise from
circumstances brought about by the war. Some will follow on the
change in the age distribution of the population which will result from
the decline in the birth rate. Until recently the generally accepted
indications as to the trend of population suggested that the war years
would include those in which the population of the country would have
been at a maximum. The recent Memorandum of the Registrars General
of England and Wales and of Scotland includes calculations of the
future population based on the assumptions that the mortality rates
will continue to decline and that the present day fertility rate continues,
the resulting calculations showed a maximum population of between
47 and 48 millions may be expected during the decade 1951 to 1961.