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Telephone:
TEDdington Lock 2223-4
TEDdington Lock 4411-5
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 1961 on the
health and sanitary conditions of the Borough together with the
supplement containing the statistical tables for 1960 as required
by the Ministry of Health.
There were 13 babies who died out of every 1000 live babies
born. Fifty years ago in some places over 200 babies died for every
thousand born. We have come a long way since then. This figure for
the Borough this year is very good and reflects the greatest credit
on the parents, the welfare services, the education services and all
who are concerned in making our Borough healthy, well informed, and
with a high social standard of care and responsibility, However, there
is room for some greater responsibility amongst some of our people.
We generally have about 50 babies born to unmarried mothers each year;
but in 1960 we had 77. The rate has gone up from 3.8% to 5.4%. We
can all guess some of the reasons for this; but in terms of worry and
anxiety, of increased demand for medical and social services of all
kinds, there is a rising burden which eventually falls on us as
parents, welfare workers, educationalists, councillors and ratepayers.
You will see in the report that we have made a start on the
task of clearing the Borough of smoke. Fortunately, we in the southwest
corner of Middlesex have a favourable position in London. But
each year we plan to clear a certain part of the Borough of smoke
until eventually the whole town will be free altogether.
I have been working hard at the experimental clinic for
preventive medicine for older people at Church Road, Teddington. I
am busy trying to write a technical report on some remarkable
advances we have made in preventing deterioration in the health of
older people and I hope this report will be available early in the new
year. Dr. James and I have been able to assess the value of various
diagnostic procedures, and the relative importance of various types
of deterioration. We have been surprised at the amount of vitamin
and nutritional deficiency which exists amongst older people; the
first section of the report deals with this. Still more have we
confirmed that practically everyone over the age of 60 is in need
of preventive services. For they all have things wrong with them
which can be prevented from progressing or alleviated. We have
found a method of overcoming the difficulty of providing for many
different sorts of tablets and medicaments where the deficiencies
in any person are numerous. We are gradually developing screening
techniques for the rapid assessment of deficiencies and we think
these will prove of great value.
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