FROM THE ARCHIVES:
The state of a country's health might not be expected to be good during wartime or, indeed, to be given the highest priority. An official British report for 1942 showed otherwise, according to this editorial in a greatly-reduced (to four pages) and censored Irish Times on this day in 1943.
SIR WILSON Jameson, the Chief Medical Officer of the British Ministry of Health, has given a cheerful report upon the health of the nation during the war. The birth-rate for 1942, he says, is likely to prove the highest for 10 years; the death-rate, including air-raid casualties, will probably be the second lowest ever recorded; the infantile mortality rate will be the lowest on record. These statistics are, on the face of it, impressive, and there is no reason to suppose that they are misleading. In relation to disease, the position is satisfactory. Venereal disease has increased enormously – indeed, alarmingly – since the outbreak of war. On the other hand, there has been no epidemic of influenza this year, and the usual season for it is now over. Diphtheria is less prevalent, and, while there has been an increase of 3 per cent in the number of cases of tuberculosis notified, the mortality rate has been brought down again to the pre-war level. Sir Wilson believes that the plain nutrition occasioned by war conditions is largely responsible for the satisfactory state of public health at a time when strain is greater, work harder, and holidays fewer than ever before. It may be interesting, and perhaps instructive, to compare the state of health in Ireland – a country still at peace, and still producing satisfactory supplies of the most nourishing foods. This month diphtheria is declared to be “still rife in Dublin.” . . . A serious outbreak of typhus in Galway was checked with difficulty, owing to the violent opposition of the inhabitants during the outbreak. As regards the “Irish disease,” tuberculosis, Dr J. Hannigan TD, estimated that it affected, in some form, one-tenth of the population of Dublin. Fifty per cent of the deaths were of persons between 15 and 35 years of age. According to figures readily available, the number of deaths from non-pulmonary tuberculosis declined from 785 in 1937 to 687 in 1939, but in 1940 and 1941 had increased again to 778 and 829 respectively . . . In truth, there is no room for complacency on this side of the Irish Sea. It might be well if the health of the nation received half as much thought as the spirit of the nation.
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