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7
BOROUGH OF BARNES.
REPORT OF THE MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH
FOR THE YEAR 1952
PREFACE
In accordance with Ministry of Health Circular 2/53 the Annual
Report for 1952 has been prepared on the same lines as previous years,
and consists of two parts—a preface in which reference is made to
items of special interest, and an appendix in which is tabulated the
statistics relating to the health of the district.
The Registrar General is now supplying local authorities with
"Comparability Factors" in respect of births and deaths, and you will
see that these have been used in the compilation of the various statistics.
I would explain that the use of the factors supplied by the Registrar
General give corrected figures to the local rates, enabling truer comparisons
to be made with the remainder of the country—i.e. as though
the ages and sexes of the local population were in the same proportion
as those for the whole country.
STAFF
There have been no changes of staff in the Public Health
Department during the year.
PREVALENCE OF, AND CONTROL OVER, INFECTIOUS
DISEASES
Generally
The incidence of Infectious Disease during the year was low,
although there was an increase in the number of cases of scarlet fever,
and poliomyelitis, as compared with the previous year. 1952 was an
inter-epidemic year for measles, and less than half the number of cases
of the previous epidemic year were reported.
Again there were no cases of Diphtheria notified.
Poliomyelitis
There were eight cases of Poliomyelitis notified during the year
(seven paralytic and one non-paralytic) all of them children up to the
age of 16. Of these three recovered completely with no residual
paralysis, and of the remaining cases three had slight paralysis, whilst
two had more extensive paralysis.
There was one death from Poliomyelitis assigned to Barnes during
the year. This was the case of a child, who was ordinarily resident