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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 1955.
This Report like its predecessors continues the record of steady
progress in the well-being of the local community which advances in medical
knowledge particularly in the field of preventive medicine, and their
practical application have made possible.
The birth rate was lower than in the year before as was the death rate,
the latter again being considerably less than the national figure. Infant
mortality rose, but still compares favourably with the rate for England and
Wales. Once more there was no maternal death.
The most satisfactory feature of the death returns was the precipitous
fall in the mortality from tuberculosis, only three deaths being attributable
to this disease against an annual average of fifteen in the last five years.
Cancer here, as elsewhere, remains the chief single cause of death with
malignant disease of the lungs responsible for a high proportion of the total
of such deaths.
An increase in the prevalence of poliomyelitis marred an otherwise
satisfactory position with regard to infectious disease. As has been observed
in a previous report, the long established common infectious diseases
especially those due to organisms within the visible range of the microscope
such as scarlet fever, ophthalmia, diphtheria, enteric fever, etc., have largely
been brought under control and now present very little in the way of a
public health problem. Our chief concern and threat today in this field are
the infections due to those ultra microscopic organisms known as viruses.
Of these poliomyelitis has in recent years taken an increasing toll in morbidity
and mortality. The results, however, of research in the last year or
so on the production of an efficient vaccine hold great promise that this
grossly disabling affliction will also yield to the preventive action of an
immunisation procedure as diphtheria has done.
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