View report page

6
and Wales and the County of London being 50 and 48 respectively.
Only 56 cases of diphtheria were notified. Never before has such
a small number of cases been recorded in the Borough, the previous
low record being 157 cases in 1910. There were only 4 deaths from
this disease. Notified cases of scarlet fever numbered 319, and this
is the smallest number of cases reported in any year since 1918.
The extremely low incidence of the common infectious diseases
and the failure of measles to make its biennial onslaught on the
child population of the Borough were probably due to the evacuation
of children which took place at the outbreak of war and to the
closure of the elementary schools in London at that time. It will
be interesting to see whether the arrival in reception areas of a
large proportion of the child population of London had any effect
upon the incidence of infectious disease in those districts. Whilst
it is pleasing to be able to draw attention to the remarkably small
incidence of infectious disease and the satisfactory mortality
statistics, it would be too much to hope that war-time conditions
will not have an adverse effect upon the public health.
Although there was some interruption of the work of the
Sanitary Inspectors at the outbreak of war, it is interesting to note
that the number of inspections made and the number of notices
served by the Sanitary Inspectors compare favourably with the work
of the previous year. The work of the Sanitary Inspectors since
the commencement of heavy raiding on the Metropolis has been made
extremely difficult owing to the damage to drainage systems, and
so on, and every effort is being made to cope with this situation,
and I will have more to say on this subject when compiling a report
for the year 1940.
The Council's Maternity and Child Welfare schemes were also
considerably dislocated in the early wedks of the war by the
evacuation of a large number of children and the transfer of several
of the health visiting staff to work in the First Aid Posts. When
these had been satisfactorily established, and with the return of
many mothers and children to London, the discontinued sessions
at Child Welfare Clinics were restarted and have now returned
almost to normal. With the completion of training of a sufficient
number of temporary staff for war-time duties it was possible to
re-arrange the duties of the health visiting staff so that the fullest
use could be made of their special qualifications and experience.
Special duties placed upon the Public Health Department are
as follows:—
Training and all administration in connection with First
Aid Posts (including issue and care of equipment); training