View report page

Public Health Department,
Elmfield House,
High Street,
Teddington,
To the Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors of the Borough of Twickenham.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have the honour to submit my Annual Report for 1956 on the health and
sanitary conditions of the Borough together with the supplement containing
the statistical tables for 1955 as required by the Ministry of Health.
I am most disappointed with the proposals for the retention of two-tier
local government in Middlesex as set out in the Government White Paper on
the Areas and Status of Local Authorities in England and Wales. Members
of the Area Health Committee know that this Committee meets six times a
year to do little more than to approve the actions taken by the staff in the
course of their normal duties and to hear what new changes in policy the County
committees have formulated. It takes so long to obtain any amendment to a
decision that the original reason is frequently forgotten. The dead hand of
uniformity exerts its cold pressure on all initiative. I beg you, Madam Mayor,
to do all in your power to obtain for Twickenham, and if you can for the other
parts of this area, the status of a county borough with real power to control
its own health services. Not until then will the old spirit of enterprise which
urged us to experiment with and introduce new measures of preventive and
social medicine, regain its brightness like a shining star to lead us on with
renewed vigour to further endeavour, as it was before 1948.
The Society of Medical Officers of Health celebrated its hundredth birthday
this year. It afforded an opportunity of looking at the progress made in
community health over the past hundred years and to examine the problems of
the future. For the fifty odd years up to 1900 the main concern was in cleaning
up the filth in the towns and in controlling the infectious diseases. The next
fifty years were concerned in providing and developing the personal health
services, such as the school health service, maternity and child welfare, midwifery,
health visiting, home helps, the handicapped and the aged. The next
fifty years will be concerned with the elimination of the degenerative diseasescoronary
thrombosis, diseases of the heart and arteries, high blood pressure,
and cancer. There is already an important contribution to the possible cause
of arterial disease mentioned later in this report. Scientific progress is nowadays
so rapid that often problems which appeared insoluble a few years ago are being
conquered with great rapidity. Poliomyelitis, like diphtheria, is probably on its
way out. Tuberculosis still remains to be conquered.
I want very much to try the experiment of a clinic for the discovery and
prevention of the diseases of the elderly. There is ample evidence of the
amount of disability affecting them and there are already a number of useful
preventive measures which can be instituted. I wish, Madam Mayor, you had
the power to say " Go ahead and do it."
2