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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,
I have the honour to present the 32nd Annual Report on the health of the
population of the Borough of Brentford and Chiswick.
The general standard of health throughout the Borough remained good in 1959.
Epidemic disease was absent but in the early part of the year a certain amount
of minor influenza affected a proportion of the people, school children in perticular.
There was a rise in the birth rate, a fall in the death rate, but the infant
mortality rate showed an increase.
The satisfactory figure of only two deaths from tuberculosis, the former
'white plague' of this country, was counterbalanced somewhat by the absence of
reduction in the notifications of this disease.
Prom the infectious disease statistics it is a little disturbing to notice
the return of scarlet fever which had appeared to be almost eliminated.
The amount of work still being found to be required to bring food premises
in the Borough up to statutory standards was considerable and the number of items
of unsound food offered for sale and requiring official action was greater than
in previous years.
Much attention is required to be given to individual cases of neglected
aged persons, and every effort is made to secure for them not only those services
to which they are entitled but, by a combination of the facilities of the statutory
bodies and the various welfare organisations, to restore them, without interfering
unduly into their privacy or injuring their feelings of independence or
their personal dignity, to healthier and happier living conditions. The Mealson-Wheels
Service, steadily expanding, is greatly appreciated, and has in many
cases saved elderly people from slow starvation.
More new houses were built during the year and progress in slum clearance
was good. These facts combined with the other fact that vacancies for employment
continued to outnumber persons employable are good to observe as for physical
and mental health useful and satisfying work and a good home are two of the
greatest assets.
The first part of the Clean Air programme was made official in 1959 by the
making of an Order to free an area of approximately one eighth of Brentford
and Chiswick from atmospheric pollution by smoke.
This annual review of the work of the Department to me is always astonishing
and always fascinating. New problems arise and new ways have to be found of dealing
with them. Much time and much patience used up with apparently little resulting
suddenly are more than compensated because a number of cold uninteresting
looking figures in some Table in the Report means that lives are being saved, or
lifelong illhealth or mental disease being prevented. Nevertheless defeat and
despair can occur, the battle with disease from dirt and squalor was succeeded
by the war on bacteria, and as this is being gradually won, virus diseases and
cancer advance into the field.
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