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REPORT OF THE
MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH.
To the Chairman and Members of the Urban District Council of
Harrow.
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen,
I beg to submit the Annual Report on the Health and Sanitary
Circumstances of the District for the year 1945.
The presentation of an annual report is one of the duties imposed on
a medical officer of health. Under article 17 (5) of the Sanitary Officers
(Outside London) Regulations, 1935, as soon as practicable after the
31st December in each year, he shall make an annual report to the local
authority on the sanitary circumstances, the sanitary administration,
and the vital statistics of the district . . . and shall furnish the Minister
with as many copies of such report as the Minister may from time to
time require. Before the war it had been the custom of the Ministry to
issue a circular of guidance as to the form the report should take. During
the war years, because of the shortage of paper, the Ministry were content
with summary reports. Each year though, the Public Health Committee
requested that that presented locally should follow the more usual pattern.
This year an attempt has been made to include in the report those matters
which have a bearing on local health, even though these are not the
function of the local authority. It is felt that presentation in this form
might be of assistance to the many new members of the Council, and be
perhaps a reminder to others of the steps that have led up to the present
organization. It is felt too, that as a period of change and progress—
or at least, change—is perhaps to be entered upon, and one during which
are to be introduced those measures promised, or perhaps in the eyes of
some threatened, of which so much was heard during the war years, that
a summary of the existing state of affairs might be helpful.
Fully to understand the set up of the present arrangements it is
necessary to consider briefly the development of local government and
of the health service, it being appreciated that the services which may be
given by an Authority are limited to those which they are empowered
to provide. The legislation for the promotion of environmental hygiene
was largely concentrated in the last quarter of the last century. The
1875 Act with its sanitary provisions and its sanitary districts replaced
or consolidated legislation which imposed certain hygienic duties on ad hoc
authorities, replacing an arrangement which left much undone which
called for attention, largely because it was the responsibility of no body.
This Act was soon followed by a spate of legislation dealing with food,
river pollution, factories, diseases of animals, housing, and infectious
diseases control and treatment. The duties in these Acts were largely
imposed on the sanitary authorities. In only one case was the purpose
of these Acts the concern of the individual, namely, the Isolation Hospitals
Acts, and even these were designed not so much in his interests as to
attempt to ensure by removing an infective focus, a safer atmosphere for
the general public.