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PREFACE.
Public Health Offices,
Ilfokd.
March, 1924.
To the Chairman and Members
of the Ilford Urban District Council.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
1 have the honour to present herewith the Annual Report
required by the Ministry of Health and Board of Education.
It shows two satisfactory features as regards the health of
the town:—
(1) The infant mortality rate of 41 is the lowest yet recorded.
In 1904 with a population half that of last year and a
much wider rural area, 198 babies died in the first year of life.
The Medical Officer of Health in his report for 1904 said, "It
will be seen from the above, too, that the waste of infant life is
far greater in Urban communities than in Rural—a fact which
must be borne in mind with regard to rapidly increasing Ilford
as becoming more and more truly Urban in character."
However, with a far larger urbanisation of the district in
1924, and double the population of 1904, only 66 babies died in
the first year of life.
Not all of this improvement can be held to be due to Infant
Welfare work, for there are other factors besides (e.g., the
declining birth-rate), and the infant mortality showed a distinct
reduction before such work was undertaken, but there are certain
significant figures which show the importance of the work. Of
the 66 babies who died last year in the first year of life, only
5 had ever attended an Infant Welfare Centre. Admitting that
of the 66, 34 died in the first month and were too young to be
brought to a Centre, we are left with the figures that five times
as many deaths occurred in infants during the first year of life
who had never attended such a Centre as in those who had.
One of the best compliments paid to the Infant Welfare Centre
work in Ilford, is the conversation of an undertaker who, on
calling to arrange for the funeral of a young baby, asked the
mother if she had taken her baby to an Infant Welfare Centre;
she admitted she had not. "Ah!" the undertaker replied, "that
is where you should have gone—we have had no trade in babies
since they started those Centres."
The figures at the Maternity Home are more remarkable still,
for here the infant mortality rate was less than half that in the
district generally. The majority of infant deaths occur in the
first month of life, and it is to adequate ante-natal supervision