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7
Preface
Public Health Offices,
Ilford.
July, 1957.
To the Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors of the Borough of Ilford.
Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I submit herewith the Annual Report of the Health Services for the
year 1956.
Births and Deaths.
In my Annual Report last year 1 suggested that this year we might,
for the first time, find more deaths than births in the Borough. This foreboding,
however, has not come true. In 1956, we had 2,115 births as
compared with 2,086 deaths, so we are still experiencing a very slight
increase in our population. We did complain last year that the death rate
in the town was inflated somewhat by the number of deaths in our two
large mental hospitals who, together, cater for a large part of Greater
London as well as for Ilford. The Registrar General has taken note of
these complaints and has given Ilford a new comparability factor (now
0.95 instead of 103). This comparability factor has reduced our adjusted
death rate to 10.97, i.e. less than last year, although this year we have
actually had more deaths in a slightly smaller population. However, our
new adjusted death rate means that the rate in Ilford is now lower than
that in England and Wales (which is 11.7), thus giving a more realistic
description of the health of the town.
We have one most important achievement to bring to your attention
from last year. With a rate of 15.6 deaths of children under one year
of age per 1000 births, we have achieved our lowest infant mortality rate
ever, and probably one of the lowest in the country. The rate for England
and Wales is 23.8 and our rate has improved from 20 in the previous year.
In actual fact there were only 33 deaths of infants under one year of age
last year, and of these deaths 13 were due to congenital malformations,
conditions over which, in the present state of our knowledge, we have very
little control. The birth rate itself is beginning to rise, being 11.48 as
against 11.21 the year before, but we are still, however, far below the rate
in England and Wales of 15.6.
Infectious Disease.
It is pleasing to announce that last year we had no deaths in this town
from scarlet fever, enteric fever, diphtheria, measles, whooping cough,
infantile diarrhoea, meningococcal infection or smallpox. I could also say
truthfully that there had been no deaths from poliomyelitis but unfortunately
one person who contracted the disease last year died from it earlier
this year. We still have a certain amount of alimentary infection in the
schools which sometimes is attributed to food poisoning, but in many cases
cannot be due in any way to food consumed within the school. At one
time there was some complaint of enteritis in ten Ilford schools. In a few
of them the infection was traced to the Sonne bacillus or the Salmonella
organism, but in the majority of them we were baffled in finding out the
cause of the trouble, which indeed was very mild as it was rare for any
of the children to be away from school for more than a day or two.