The Health Report The annual report of the Ministry of
Health (Stationery Office. 5s.) would repay reading if only as an account of how some £65,000,000 of Exchequer money is spent; the Health Department is to be congratulated on the special efforts it has made to make this survey of an essential social service as easily readable as possible. The special services provided for such diseases as tuberculosis, for which the mortality figures are the lowest on record, and venereal disease, are shown to have been extremely successful ; town-planning schemes have progressed slowly, and in the fourth year of the five-year housing programme the report on the Overcrowding Survey in England and Wales states that only 3.8 per cent. of 9,000,000 dwellings inspected were overcrowded. Sir Kingsley Wood draws special attention to the filling up of gaps in the national service of medical attendance from birth to death. The Midwives Bill ensures that a qualified nurse shall be present at every confinement ; it is to be hoped that its effect will soon be evident in the maternal mortality figures which are still " obstinately static " ; and plans are ready for closing the gaps between child welfare and school medical services, and between school medical service and entry into health insurance. Sir Kingsley describes the year 1936-37 as " in itself a good year for health." These im- provements in national services, together with the six months' campaign to encourage wider use of local health services, which begins in October, should make the next year's con- siderably better.
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