View report page

PREFACE.
To the Chairman and Members of the
Merton and Morden Urban District Council.
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have the honour to present my Annual Report for the
year 1938.
The year under review provides yet another series of those
favourable annual statistics to which the district is accustomed.
Contributing to this result we have the benefit of an
extensive development fashioned on modern and well planned
lines and of a young population composed to a large extent
of those age groups which furnish low death and morbidity
rates. Nevertheless when allowance is made for the composition
of the population by the application of the areal comparability
factor, mortality remains at a persistently low level.
The high child population again on the other hand in itself
increases the chances of the transmission of infectious illness
yet the prevalence of these diseases is on the average definitely
less than the general experience.
To refer to 1938 in particular, the comparable death-rate
is again under 9.0 per thousand of the population and infant
mortality less than 40 per thousand births, but perhaps the
most heartening feature of the statistics is the sharp rise in
the birth-rate to 14.3 per thousand live births from 12.3 in the
year before. The natural increase is now at a rate of no less
than 7.0 per thousand population since the birth-rate is almost
double the death-rate.
With regard to infectious illness, control measures here
as elsewhere, made little impression on the prevalence of mild
Scarlet Fever. Hospital isolation has failed to reduce it and
it may be that hospital treatment when practised largely on
the multiple bed ward system actually assists the dissemination
of this infection. Diphtheria, in marked contrast, has
undoubtedly yielded considerably to immunisation procedure
though much more can be done by extended use of this prophylactic
measure.
Sanitary circumstances received the same close supervision
as hitherto. The standard of housing, generally very good, is
however, being improved by the steady elimination of poor
and defective conditions and by unremitting attention to ageing
properties.
2