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PREFACE.
To the Chairman and Members of the
Merton & Morden Urban District Council.
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have the honour to present my Annual Report for 1950.
In the following pages will be found the facts and figures by
which we can measure the state of health of our own community
— the people of Merton and Morden. By comparing these figures
with those for similar towns and with the country as a whole we
can judge to what extent we have been able to make our environment
a healthy one, at least within the limits imposed by such
national factors as climate, national prosperity, racial habits and
so on.
If we look at our Vital Statistics for a moment, our maternal
mortality is Nil, as it has been for the past three years, and our
facilities for the care of pregnancy and childbirth, we are proud
to be able to say, are of the highest standard, so that in the first
essential of a healthy community, the care of motherhood, we are
among the most fortunate areas. Our infant mortality rate stands
at the lowest level ever reached at 11.73 per thousand — a figure
which is likely to be the lowest for any area in the whole country
and which compares with 29.8 per thousand for England and
Wales as a whole. So that as a place in which to rear infants it
has its points. The death rate at age 1-4 was 729 per million
compared with a rate of 2,175 per million for the country as a
whole.
As regards Infectious Disease, with the exception of Scarlet
Fever and Pneumonia the incidence is lower than that for the
whole country, and with the exception of these two diseases and
measles in London Administrative County our incidence is lower
than that for London County, the 126 County Councils and Great
Towns, the 148 smaller towns, as well as for England and Wales
as a whole.
Our death rate at 9.35 per thousand population, though the
highest since 1944, is still lower than the comparable rates, and
elsewhere I have recorded that 98 of our old people survived their
80th birthday, 14 passed their 90th birthday, and one old lady
missed her centenary by only 2 years, having the misfortune to
sustain an accident.
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