HC Deb 24 May 1979 vol 967 c213W
Mr. Pavitt

asked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will publish in the Official Report the number of cases of rickets in 1968, 1973 and 1978.

Dr. Vaughan

Rickets is not a notifiable disease and, accordingly, figures are not available. Answers, which were necessarily of an impressionistic character, given in the course of a survey recently carried out by officers of my Department suggest that while there was an increase in the incidence of the disease in this country in the earlier part of the past decade, there had, in the later part, been a noticeable decrease.