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5
ANNUAL REPORT OF THE
MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH
To the Chairman and Members of the Urban District Council of Harrow.
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I beg to submit the Annual Report on the Health and Sanitary
Circumstances of the District for the year 1952.
The health of the population as judged by the vital statistics was
very satisfactory. There were no cases of diphtheria, no deaths from
measles and only one from whooping cough. Influenza caused just a
few deaths at the extremes of the year. There was a welcome fall in the
number of cases of tuberculosis notified and in the number of deaths
caused by this complaint. The infant mortality rate was low. The
maternal mortality rate was slightly above the national figure. The excess
of the local over the national rate was due to the inclusion of one case
in which pregnancy could have had very little to do with the death. The
other fatalities occurred amongst patients who had arranged to be
confined in hospitals.
Because of the financial difficulty the country continues to be in,
and because of the steadily rising costs of different departments of the
health services, there are those who feel that the country cannot afford
to spend as much as is being spent on these services. (There is too, the
view of those who maintain the country cannot afford ill health from
a productive apart from a humanitarian angle). With the overlap which
is only too possible under the present tripartite administration of Regional
Hospital Boards, Executive Councils, and Local Authorities, the question
is rightly being asked of whether some tidier arrangement might not be
more efficient and more economical. Such thoughts lead to the question
of the necessity to-day for at least some of the health services being
provided by local authorities. Consideration of such problems leads
back to the origins of the activities of local authorities in health matters.
The position, of course, is that local authorities stepped in because the
need for something to be done was there and no organised attempt was
being made to meet those needs. Local authorities themselves might
well have had their origins in the necessity of devising some machinery
which would make it the obligation of some organisation or authority to
see that the basic essential sanitary services were available for those
living in every part of the country. The story of the development of the
personal services runs on the same lines. The findings of those who
examined recruits for the Boer War and the findings of the Royal
Commission on Physical Training led to the passing of the Education
(Administrative Provisions) Act, under which the only recently created
education authorities were obliged to arrange for the examination of
every pupil attending the then called elementary schools. It was not
intended that anything more should be done than arrange for these
examinations, the intention being that those found to be in need of
treatment should be referred to existing agencies—the doctors and the