[Report 1954] / Medical Officer of Health, Chichester City.

  • Chichester (England). City Council.
Date:
1954
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1954] / Medical Officer of Health, Chichester City. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    6/64 (page 4)
    PUBLIC HEALTH DEPARTMENT, “ GREYFRIARS.” NORTH STREET, CHICHESTER. July, 1955. To the Chairman and Members of the Public Health and Housing Committee. Mr. Mayor, Mrs. Eastland and Gentlemen, I have the honour to present my thirteenth Annual Report on the health of the City of Chichester and the work of the Public Health Department during the year 1954. This has been compiled, in accordance with Ministry of Health Circular 28/54, on the lines of the previous year’s report. The very high standard of health shown by the statistics for 1953, and previous years has been generally maintained, and in some instances actually improved upon. I wish to draw your attention to the following indices of the general state of the health of the City, but I would ask you to remember that in a City such as Chichester, with a relatively small population, a slight variation in the number of births, deaths and infant deaths, etc., will tend to be reflected dis- proportionately in the resultant rates per 1,000. 1. BIRTHS AND BIRTH RATE. There has been an increase in births from 271 in 1953, to 291 in 1954, the rates being respectively 14.05 and 15.3 per 1,000 of the population. The Registrar General has this year again supplied an Area Comparability Factor for births, which allows for the differing age and sex distributions of the population in different areas, and enables a more accurate comparison to be made between the birth rate for Chichester City and that for England and Wales (see pages 15 and 16). The birth rate for the City for 1954, when adjusted by the comparabihty factor, is increased from 15.3 to 15.6 per 1,000 of the population. The birth rate for England and Wales was 15.2 in 1954 compared with 15.5 in 1953. 2. DEATHS AND DEATH RATE. There was an increase of 24 in the number of deaths from 276 in I953> to 300 in 1954, tne crude death rates (i.e. the unadjusted death rate) being respectively 14.31 and 15.78 per 1,000 of the population. The death rates for England and Wales were 11.4 per 1,000 of the population in 1953, and 11.3 in 1954.