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PREFACE
To the Chairman and Members of the
Carshalton Urban District Council.
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have the honour to present my Report on the health of the
district for the year 1949.
The period under review was the first complete year of the operation
of the National Health Service Act, 1946. As you are aware, many
functions which the Council previously exercised passed with the Act
to other authorities and, in consequence, there is now no published
review of the transferred services including that devoted to the care
of mothers and young children which previously formed a large part
of this Annual Report.
The vital statistics which are the main indices to the state of
public health are generally satisfactory. The death rate is again less
than that for the country as a whole and is still lower after allowance
is made for the more favourable composition as to age and sex of the
local population. There was for the fifth year in succession no maternal
death, but the infant mortality rate was twice that of the year before.
It should, however, be remembered that the infant death rate of 29 per
thousand live births is still less than the national figure and that the
mortality for 1948 was a phenomenally low one. There was a welcome
fall in mortality from cancer and that from tuberculosis was the lowest
for 26 years.
The incidence of infectious disease was much in accord with
expectation and there was no major visitation of this type of illness.
Measles, following a year of high prevalence, was markedly less common
in 1949. Diphtheria gave rise to one case only and thus provides a
record low incidence for this infection which is shared with the year
before. Infantile paralysis was contracted by three persons as in the
previous year, but was not fatal in any. Only one death was caused
by infectious disease and that by whooping cough.
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