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BOROUGH OF BRENTFORD AND CHISWICK
Public Health Department,
Town Hall,
Chiswick, W.4.
To the Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors of
the Borough of Brentford and Chiswick.
Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen,
1 have the honour to present the 22nd Annual Report on the
Health and Sanitary circumstances of the Borough of Brentford
and Chiswick.
The health of the population continued to be good.
The Birth Rate continued to fall as it has been doing since
1946. It was 16.19 in 1949 compared with 17.9 in 1948. This is
very little different from the average Birth Rate for the rest of
the country, which was 16.7.
The Death Rate of 10.98 was a reduction from 11.5 in 1948.
The average Death Rate for the whole of the country was 11.7.
The main causes of death were cancer and heart disease, both of
which caused higher numbers of deaths than in 1948, i.e., heart
disease was the cause of 188 deaths in 1949 as compared with
165 in 1948, and cancer 122 in 1949 as compared with 115 in
1948. Two satisfactory points to note about the statistics of the
causes of death are the reduction in the number of deaths from
tuberculosis which were 25 in 1949 a drop of 35 per cent. from the
1948 figure of 39, and the lower figure for deaths from violence
of all kinds from 45 in 1948 to 26 in 1949. Comparison of the
tuberculosis death rate with the figure for the tuberculosis notifications
shows a corresponding decrease there from 115 total
notifications in 1948 to 110 in 1949. An analysis of the occupations
of the newly notified cases of tuberculosis shows a slight preponderance
in the notifications in the case of Factory Workers,
Clerical Workers and Housewives. I consider that a figure of
16 pre-school and schoolchildren notified as suffering from tuberculosis
is rather a high proportion of the total figure. Six of these
were cases of pulmonary tuberculosis, i.e., suffering because of
human infection, 10 were non-pulmonary.
There was a minor rise in the notification rate of measles
during the months of March and April, 1949, but apart from
this, the incidence of infectious disease was lower than in 1948
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