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Chigwell Urban District Council
To the Chairman and Members of the
Chigwell Urban District Council
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have pleasure in presenting to you the Annual Report,
including the report of the Senior Sanitary Inspector, for the
year ending 31st December, 1949.
In the statistical tables which follow, births and deaths
have been corrected for " inward " and " outward " transfers,
i.e., they refer only to persons who normally reside in the
district, and they include all births and deaths among them
wherever occurring. Infectious diseases, however, are allocated
to the district in which they arise, irrespective of the
place of normal residence of the pptient. All rates are based
on civilian population as in previous years.
The most noteworthy event affecting the health of the
population during the year was a severe outbreak of infantile
paralysis, details of which are given in Section F of this
report. As always with this disease, and because of its tragic
effects, public anxiety regarding the adequacy of precautionary
measures and of facilities for treatment was evident. It
is impossible, and it would be wrong, for complacency to
exist in the present limited state of knowledge concerning the
prevention and treatment of this dreaded disease, but all the
evidence at my disposal clearly indicates that in no case was
recovery prejudiced by lack of facilities for treatment, and
that the unavoidable short delays which in one or two cases
attended the transfer of patients from isolation hospital to
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