[Report 1951] / Medical Officer of Health, Barnsley County Borough.

  • Barnsley (England : Unitary authority). County Borough Council.
Date:
1950
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1951] / Medical Officer of Health, Barnsley County Borough. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    93/158 (page 91)
    Part IV ENVIRONMENTAL HYGIENE _ As m previous years, the work of improving and maintaining the environmental hygiene of the County Borough continued quietly during 1951. Attention was drawn to the unspectacular nature of this work in last year s report and little, if anything, has happened during the year under review which would materially alter those comments on the activities of the Sanitary Authority. For this reason these activities continue to be taken for granted and to be perhaps overlooked by the greater part of the community to whom environmental hygiene is of interest'only when some break-down occurs in its maintenance. Much of this lack of interest is probably due to the classical and statutory prescribed methods of reporting and describing the work of the Sanitary Authority. Each year this consists of figures for inspection of various kinds of reports and of notices served on various people. This is largely due to the manner in which the services concerned have developed. In the late Nineteenth Century the only method of securing improve- ment was by formal inspection followed by report and even to-day it is well to^ have this included in the armamentarium of the Sanitary Authority. Increasing enlightenment on the part of the community has, however, resulted in the advice of the Officers of the Sanitary Authority being sought by property owners and traders in many cases before complaints are made, so that many of the figures shown as inspections have actually been done at the request or on the suggestion of the person who in days gone by would have been the recipient of a formal statutory notice following a routine inspection. In this way a flexible and very effective system of promoting environmental hygiene has been established. It is, however, extremely difficult with the kind of statistical approach at present employed to demonstrate clearly the part which co-operation and advice play in maintaining an environment safe to the health of the com- munity. This is most unfortunate as it prevents the use of a simple method of estimating progress in public appreciation and sense of responsibility of environmental health problems. At the same time it causes each succeeding year’s health report to drav/ a picture which not only does far less than justice to the effort and thought expended by the Sanitary Authority and its officers but which is unnecessarily uninteresting to the casual reader. In this way a brake is put upon the further development of a system of environmental hygiene based upon co-operation between members of the community, owners of interests likely to be prejudicial to health and the Sanitary Authority. Reference was also made in last year’s report to the modern concept of social medicine and the part to be played in its development by the study and control of environmental hygiene. The suggestion was made that a nev/ approach was necessary tO' the work of the Sanitary Authority. Nov/ it