View report page

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 1953.
Once more it is possible to record that as judged by vital statistics
the health of the district for the year has been most satisfactory. For
yet another year the district has been free from diphtheria, this being
the third consecutive year of freedom. In the last six years there have
been only two cases. Although measles and whooping cough were
both prevalent, there was only the one death from measles. The district
was relatively free from influenza which attacked some parts of the
country in the earlier weeks of the year until late in February, when it
was responsible for a number of deaths. There has been a further fall
in the number of deaths from tuberculosis, but an increase in the number
of cases notified during the year. The infant mortality rate was again
below that of the country as a whole, although this has fallen to such a
satisfactory level. The one maternal death resulted in a mortality rate
of 0.3.
Although there is nothing outstanding in the health of the district
in this last year to record, it will be seen that special reference is made
to certain matters. Of these housing can once more be expected to
take up the time of those in the health department, because of the stimulus
given by proposed new legislation to improve the conditions under which
many are living. The report, too, contains summaries of the recent
reports on smoke and the abatement of atmospheric pollution. That the
district is comparatively free from this nuisance is perhaps only a challenge
to all concerned to see that what pollution is occurring should be reduced.
Reference is again made to the subject of clean food. The campaign
has now entered on the phase of educating consumers and future consumers
in the hope that these will play their part in raising the standard
of care in the handling of food.
Reference is made to the extent to which the district was affected by
poliomyelitis, and to the incidence of tuberculosis. The number of new
cases learned of in the last year was a sharp rise on the figure for the
previous year, though fewer than the new cases in the preceding years.
The means by which new cases might be discovered are discussed.
The last pages of the report contain the vital statistics for the twenty
years of the Urban District. Perhaps the most striking figures are those
of the steady fall in the infant mortality rate and the freedom of the
district from diphtheria for a number of years.
This is the last of the Annual Reports about the health of the Urban
District as next year's will start the series relating to the health of the
Borough. Unfortunately, the advance in civic status does not confer on