[Report 1970] / Medical Officer of Health, Coventry County & City.

  • Coventry (England). County and City Council.
Date:
1970
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1970] / Medical Officer of Health, Coventry County & City. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    14/180 (page 10)
    Disturbing too is the high proportion of commonwealth immigrants suffering from non-pulmonary tuberculosis, i.e. some 33 out of 54 notifications which came to our notice in 1970. In my respective reports for 1 968 and 1 969, attention was drawn to the alarming increase of deaths and also to the high morbidity arising from certain non-infectious diseases during recently passed years. When we think in terms of serious epidemic outbreaks there is a tendency for most of us to picture such dangerous and readily transmissable con- ditions as e.g. cholera or smallpox occurring among, and maybe decimating sizable sections of population. It is not easy for us now to visualise epidemic visitations of serious communicable disease - other than perhaps influenza - as likely to occur in the British Isles: such is the faith in our Public Health Service — a feeling which with some con- siderable justification (because we have not witnessed large scale outbreaks here for many years) we cannot readily contemplate as likely to be misplaced. Much more acceptable” is the picture of tragedy and human suffering when far removed from the United Kingdom and it is only when some near catastrophic situation is suddenly with us in the homeland that, as a population, we are jolted out of an indifferent attitude. Ready local examples, not too distantly removed, come to mind with the two severe visitations of acute poliomyelitis to Coventry in 1953 (1 64 cases with 1 death) and in 1957 (116 cases with 3 deaths). But there are diseases of the non-infectious type, as we at present understand that designation, which quietly but quite ruthlessly and efficiently insinuate until by sheer numbers the menacing statistics can no longer be blanketed and break through to the surface for all to see. Such diseases indeed have greater mortality and morbidity conno- tations in current times than do the infectious diseases and no apology is made therefore in bringing them to attention yet once again. It is surely time that a longer and more steadfast look was taken at the cardio and cerebro-vascular diseases and certain cancerous con- ditions too, for these must be regarded, in health and preventive considerations, as arch enemies within our Society — year by year they are taking heavier toll. Reference to local mortality rates resulting from ischaemic heart disease will be found on page 26 where it will be noted thatthe annualdeath rate has hovered around 240 perl 00,000 population during the past three years as compared with 158, 164 and 176 in the three years, respectively, of 1959, 1960 and 1961. Then again the 1970 statistics demonstrate no abatement in the high incidence of deaths resulting from lung cancer for whereas in 1969 there were 169 such deaths we now notice that in 1970 there were 197 persons who died from this cause. Cigarette smoking is a high ranking modern 'captain of death and it is to be hoped that those who indulge in this futile and wasteful habit — (whether in terms of human life or in