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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 Annual Report on the health of
the district for the year 1951.
The year under review has, generally speaking, maintained the
overall steady improvement in public health which, like the country
as a whole, the district has experienced since the great sanitary reforms
of the last century.
The birth rate continued the downward trend which followed the
post war peak of 1946. The death rate was again appreciably less than
that for the country as a whole and remains so when corrected to allow
for the favourable age and sex constitution of the local population.
Infant mortality is little changed from the year before and approximates
to the national figure. Since 1944 there had been no maternal
death. In the past year there was again no death following childbirth *
but one death was recorded following abortion, the cause of which was
not elicited at the inquest which was held.
Tuberculosis mortality in 1951 had to contend with a particularly
favourable death rate for this disease in the year before. By comparison
it rose significantly but not to the level which had existed prior to 1950.
The new cases notified, however, showed a decrease of 40% compared
with 1950.
Cancer remains one of the main causes of death and the rate has
varied little over the past 10 years. It was slightly lower in 1951 than
in the previous year. Deaths attributed to cancer of the lung have
risen considerably throughout the country in the last 30 years and it
is difficult to say how far this increase may have been the result of more
accurate diagnosis. The local statistics show that in the last 15 years
the percentage of the total cancer deaths attributed to disease of the
lungs, has more than doubled. Another disease which in recent years
has figured more prominently among the main causes of death, is coronary
disease of the heart. Thirteen per cent of all deaths in the district were
, assigned to this cause in 1951.
The incidence of the common infectious diseases continues to reflect
the selective effects of the more recent preventive measures such as
immunisation, the use of the sulpha drugs and the modern antibiotics
such as penicillin. Measles and whooping cough were as prevalent
as usual but there is now hope that the recent advances in the use of
immunising vaccines will at least help to reduce the ravages of the
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