View report page

5
annual report of the
medical officer of health
To His Worship the Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors of the Borough of
Harrow
Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I beg to submit the Annual Report on the Health and Sanitary
Circumstances of the District for the year 1954.
One of the duties of a Medical Officer of Health as set out in the
Sanitary Officers (outside London) Regulations, 1935, is that "he shall
as soon as practicable after the 31st day of December in each year
make an annual report to the local authority for the year ending on that
date on the sanitary circumstances, sanitary administration and the vital
Statistics of the district containing in addition to any other matters upon
which he may consider it desirable to report, such information as may
from time to time be required by the Minister, and furnish the Minister
with as many copies of such report as the Minister may from time to time
require."
The pattern was for some years set by the contents of a circular
from the Minister of Health issued each year which specified too any
particular points to which especial reference should be made. Although
in recent years the Minister's circular on the form the report should take
has not been so detailed, each report for this district has been on much
the same pattern as its predecessors. Before the second world war the
circular would indicate when a more detailed or survey report was called
for; in the intervening years it was customary to refer only to those
circumstances which changed from year to year. This being the first
report about the new Borough, the Public Health Committee decided that
it should be a survey rather than an interim report.
The first section deals with the vital statistics of the district. They
are again highly satisfactory. The death rate even when corrected for
age and sex distribution by the application of the comparability factor is
appreciably below that of the country as a whole. The important infant
mortality rate is gratifyingly low. Harrow's rate has consistently been
below that of the country as a whole. The national rate has since the war
fallen so much that the difference between the local rate and that for
England and Wales is now comparatively small. The lower the rate, the
more difficult, of course, it will be to improve on it. For another year it can
be reported the district has been free from diphtheria, this being the fourth
consecutive year. The rates for the other infections were satisfactory,
there being no fatalities from whooping cough or measles. In common
with the country as a whole Harrow's incidence of poliomyelitis was light,
there being only seven cases. Although the numbers of deaths from
tuberculosis have in recent years been falling steadily, so much so that
those for the country as a whole in 1953 were only one half those of
1948, there had not been a similar fall in the numbers of notifications of
new cases. In this district the 1953 figures showed a fall. This was
followed by a much greater decline in the number in 1954. A continued