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1900] 104
Any child showing symptoms of any of the above infectious diseases, or any
child coming from a house where such an infectious disease exists, must be sent
home at once, and the superintendent of visitors must be immediately informed of
the case, care being taken to state the name of the child infected, in order that
inquiries may at once be made with a view to proper steps being taken to prevent
the children living in the same house or tenement from attending school. The
medical officer of health for the district must also at the same time be informed of
the child's exclusion, and furnished with the name and address of the child and
the reason for its exclusion on a form with which the teachers will be supplied by
the head office.
Note—The above instructions to exclude children who are not themselves
showing symptoms of infectious illness, but because of their coming from houses where
infectious diseases exist, does not apply to typhoid, enteric fever or erysipelas.
Under the provisions of the Public Health (London) Act, 1891, the medical
officer of health must, whenever a case of a notifiable infectious disease shall, in the
first instance come under his notice, forward direct to the head teacher of a school
attended by a scholar suffering from an infectious disease, or attended by any
child who is an inmate of the same house as the patient, a certificate notifying
the fact.
The notification certificate of the medical officer of health will be received by
the head teacher, who must at once see that the communication is sent to the
other head teacher, or head teachers, of the other department, or departments, of
the school concerned, and each head teacher must initial and date the certificate.
When the teacher has received this notification from the medical officer of
health, and taken all necessary action, he should note upon the certificate the action
taken, endorse it with his name and the name of the school, and also state upon it
whether the patient is a scholar of the school, and, if so, the department of the
school which the patient attended before illness, and forward it immediately to
the head office, addressed " The Medical Officer, School Board for London, Victoria
Embankment, W.C." The teacher should likewise send notice of the case to the
superintendent of visitors, if that has not already been done, on a form to be
supplied for the purpose from the head office, care being taken to state the name of
the child or family infected.
Children excluded because of a notifiable infectious disease, or because of such
an infectious disease in the houses in which they live, must not be allowed to return
to school unless a certificate has been received from the medical officer of health,
stating that the premises are free from infection. Head teachers will note that the
certificate forwarded by the medical officer of health merely states that the premises
from which the children come are free from infection, and does not certify that the
children are in a condition to be permitted to resume attendance at school, for it
may be that, though the premises are free from infection, the children coming from
such premises may be sickening for an infectious disease. It will be necessary,