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3
Metropolitan Borough of Backney
REPORT OF THE MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH
FOR THE YEAR 1943.
Public Health Department,
Town Hall, Hackney, E.8.
To the Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors
of the Metropolitan Borough of Hackney.
I have to submit my Annual Report upon the health of the
Borough in 1943, which has again been prepared on abridged lines
in accordance with the request of the Minister of Health.
There was a further increase in the number of live births and
a further improvement in the birth rate, which is higher than the
rate for the Administrative County of London and for England and
Wales. There was, however, an increase in the number of deaths
and in the death rate due principally to a rise in the deaths from
bronchitis and pneumonia. The death rate was less than that for
the Administrative County of London.
Deaths of children under one year of age numbered 110 as
compared with 107 in the previous year, but the infant mortality
rate (42.22) was slightly less in view of the increased number of
births.
Whilst there was an increase in the number of cases of
diphtheria, measles and scarlet fever, as compared with the previous
year, there was no epidemic of any seriousness and no deaths
resulted from scarlet fever and only three from measles, but there
were five deaths from diphtheria as compared with one in the