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Constant supervision exercised over food and food premises is reaping
its reward in higher standards of quality and cleanliness for many of the
articles of our daily diet. For example every sample of milk, which
numbered over 200 during the year, passed the various tests to which this
commodity is subjected—qualitative analysis—keeping quality—adequacy
of pasteurisation—freedom from tuberculosis—whilst all the 93 samples of
ice cream were found to be of the highest grade. If these gains in the field
of food control are to be consolidated, there must be no remission in the
vigilance which has secured them.
For too many years the justifiable measure of satisfaction with which
this Report on the public health has been presented, has been dimmed by
the knowledge that a menacing situation still exists due to overcrowding.
The figures for instances of legal overcrowding are admittedly few and are
slowly falling, but between the strict overcrowding standard of the Housing
Act and adequate accommodation, there is a vast amount of crowding
which remains the greatest single environmental cause of illhealth, particularly
of mental illhealth. Nothing can be more calculated to wreck
what could and should be a happy marriage, than a young couple being
condemned to live with their in-laws, added to which are the adverse effects
on physical health due to what Simon the first Medical Officer of London
graphically described in an earlier age as "this pestilential heaping of
human beings."
Progress in public health is a continuous process and like so many
perpetual advances it is marked by prominent milestones, occasions when
great strides forward are achieved. The Clean Air Act, 1956 may well
prove eventually to be such a milestone. For the first time it has been put
within the power of Local Authorities to rid the atmosphere of most of that
man-made pollution which costs the nation so much, not only in material
damage, but in an incalculable amount of mortality and still more morbidity,
due to respiratory disease. The financial cost of the creation of smokeless
zones may in the first instance seem somewhat heavy, but it is negligible
when compared with the cost alone of the hospital treatment of a wide
range of chest diseases, which owe their origin to, or are aggravated by, a
poisoned atmosphere, to say nothing of the deaths which are occasioned or
accelerated by fog and smog each winter. Realisation of the power for good
of this statutory measure like many earlier revolutionary reforms is slow,
but there is little doubt that public opinion will in the end appraise its value
and demand its benefits.
I renew my thanks to all members of the staff who by their conscientious
and willing efforts have made it possible to present once more so
satisfactory a record of health administration.
I am, Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Your obedient Servant,
F. LAWRENCE SMITH,
Medical Officer of Health.
July, 1959.
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