View report page

Madam Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have the honour to submit this Annual Report on
the Health Services of the Borough for the year 1945.
Comment is rendered difficult by the fact that the work
of which the report gives an account was carried out entirely
during the term of office of my predecessor, and I can claim
neither personal knowledge nor any credit for it.
The period under review saw the end of hostilities and
the beginning of a return to more normal conditions. The
last rocket fell in the Borough on 18th March, 1945, and
shortly afterwards those evacuees who could find some
accommodation in which to live began to return. By
midsummer the Registrar-General estimates that the population
had crept up from 128,620 of the previous year to
135,260; by the end of the year it is thought to have reached
150,300.
Concurrently with this rise went small increases in the
numbers of births and deaths; and a very substantial increase
in the number of confinements which took place in the
various hospitals, brought about by the serious condition of
so many of the houses in the Borough.
The various rates shewed little change from those of
the previous year. The birth rate was 21.6, as against 21.7;
the stillbirth rate shewed a small increase from 21 to 24; the
death rate a small increase from 14.5 to 15.2, to which several
of the causes of death contributed; and the maternal
mortality increased from 1.43 to 2.05; against this, the infant
mortality dropped from 43 to 38.
Turning now to infectious diseases, there were a number
of increases from the very low figures of the previous year.
The year 1945 was an "epidemic year" for measles, and
there was a substantial rise in the rates both of scarlet fever
and diphtheria, with a small mortality in each disease. On
3