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26
Apart from Cancer (21½%), the chief causes of deaths in
Walthamstow were diseases of the heart and blood vessels (566 - 43%)
and respiratory diseases, especially chronic bronchitis (187 - 14%),
the only other major cause of death being accidents, both home and
road, which killed 83 Walthamstow people in 1961.
We cannot say, as Dr. Clarke did of infectious diseases in 1921
Deaths from all these diseases are theoretically preventable"
although some of them are. Infant mortality has come down from 108.4
per thousand to 15.7 and the majority of such deaths now occur in the
first few hours or days after birth because of congenital abnormalities
or gross prematurity: Mortality among pre school children in
Walthamstow has fallen from 163 to 3 and of school-children from 79
to 4,
The general health of children is now so good that the two most
frequent causes of death in the 1 - 14 age group are accidents and
cancer (Office of Health Economics Report, December 1962).
The changing picture of infectious disease and of morbidity and
mortality in childhood has been reflected in a gradual re-orientation
of the services provided by the Health Department. It is now
possible for the Infectious Diseases Nurse to spend some part of her
time assisting old people, the health visitors too, find it necessary
to spend an increasing proportion of their time seeing to the welfare
of the elderly, especially those living alone. Eighty per cent of
the Home Helps are provided because of infirmity due to age and
approximately the same proportion of the District Nursing Service is
devoted to old people.
It would be economically impossible, even if it were desirable,
to provide sufficient old people's homes to accommodate all those old
people who are not being adequately looked after by their relatives,
and this growing problem can best be met by providing staff and
facilities to enable effective preventive medicine to be practised,
to maintain as far as possible the health and independence of the
elderly in their own homes.
This, with the health and welfare of the mentally and physically
handicapped, and the community care of the mentally ill will prove
the greatest challenge to the Local Authority Health and Welfare
Service now and in the future and it is to be hoped that the members
and officers of the new authority will be as successful in dealing
with these problems as their predecessors were with infectious
diseases.