[Report 1970] / Medical Officer of Health, Brackley Borough.

  • Brackley (England). Borough Council.
Date:
1970
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1970] / Medical Officer of Health, Brackley Borough. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    9/70
    At., such a time it is pertinent to review those matters which are most pressing in the field of prevention of ill health. Needs when defined, will have to be matched with available resources, and it will be necessary that priorities should be clearly assessed. In the environmental field the intensive efforts of public health pioneers and civic authorities have given a secure basis of a sanitary environment and the availability of pure water, adequate disposal of refuse and sewage are taken for granted. It is vital that such services should continue to function smoothly. The present problem is less from man's pollution of his environment than from products innocently introduced for man's convenience of which detergents are one instance. Other chemical factors requiring control are drugs and the use of antibiotics in animal feeding. VHiile on the other hand the omission of the controlled addition of minute quantities of fluoride to our water because of the pressure of a small group on local authorities has resulted in the failure to prevent dental caries in children. After five years of fluoridation Birmingham can now prove the efficacy and harmlessness of the procedure. Another factor which overshadows the secure sanitary basis is the increase of population, which if not abated will produce another 20 million inhabitants, in this already congested island, by the end of the century. All these extra individuals vrill result in the need for more seivices of every kind, including medical services. Congestion, pollution and those other factors (less obvious but non-the-less hazardous to a stable society) such as noise, road accidents, mental illness, crime and delinquency could occur. It is known already that there are 250,000 unwanted children bom annually in this country. An advanced society should have no unwanted children. To prevent these should be the first priority, and it is a task which is not yet being achieved. Those other environmental factors, many of which could be contained, if we achieved a static population grov^th, will exercise the environmentalist of the future. These include the prevention of pollution of air, land, rivers and the sea. The mass production of food will continue to require a monitoring that will inevitably increase; already factory farming methods, while producing more and cheaper food, present problems of quality and hygiene. Increasing foreign travel, and a mobile internal population resulting in more consumption of food in restaurants and canteens, together with the general use of deep freeze storage, involving increasing sale of food on a small scale at nearly all public houses, has added to the work of health departments, and the maintenance of satisfactory food handling procedures has become one of the major functions.