[Report 1957] / Medical Officer of Health, Aberdeen City.

  • Aberdeen (Scotland). City Council.
Date:
1957
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1957] / Medical Officer of Health, Aberdeen City. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    10/242 (page 8)
    VALUE TO OTHER M.Os.H. depend on the rather inadequate information that they could acquire by individual visiting of the 55 local health areas in Scotland. (3) Probably the most avid readers of Annual Reports are Medical Officers of Health. By studying the reports of his colleagues an officer can see exactly how a particular problem, with which he is having difficulty, is being tackled In comparable areas. Most Medical Officers of Health receive from time to time letters from colleagues saying “With reference to the scheme outlined on page X of your last Annual Report, I should be very grateful for any additional infor- mation . . . VALUE TO COUNCIL. (4) Ordinary reports on special subjects by Medical Officers are submitted to the Health Committee (and may never be read by members of the Council not on that Committee). Moreover, they are in a sense special pleading: they are generally produced because of a particular need and confine themselves to establishing that need and to making recommendations for coping with it. It Is extremely useful that Councillors should each year receive a report which Is not devoted to setting out a particular lack but attempts to give a broad picture of the health and health services of the area. It has to be remembered, too, that, human nature being what it is, in any special report the financial implications tend to receive major attention: it is useful that there should be one report in the year in which there are no direct and immediate financial implications. VALUE IN FORMING PUBLIC OPINION (5) When a chief officer submits a special report, his Council expects, rightly, that he will make specific recommendations which they can approve or reject; but, before the stage of concrete recommendations, it is often desirable that Councillors—and for that matter members of the general public—should give some consideration to a matter involving a major issue of policy. For example, before a Council is asked to consider whether it wishes to spend a certain sum of money on bringing the fluoride content of its water supply up to normal level, it is useful that it should have a chance to think about the pros and cons of fluoridation. The Annual Report affords a medical officer an opportunity to set out some of the arguments without necessarily making a recommendation. As a Health and Welfare Department is coming more and more to be concerned mainly with social problems and with the teaching of health, it is clearly important that public opinion should be formulated or crystalised on broad issues before an officer makes specific recommendations. The Annual Report can be of great value in helping to form local public opinion. HISTORICAL VALUE (6) Annual reports over a series of years are social documents of very con- siderable value to the student of history. VALUE TO STUDENTS. (7) To doctors and nurses specialising in public health—taking the D.P.H. Course or the Health Visitors’ Course—annual reports are of considerable value, because they give a reasonably complete picture of the services in a particular area.