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Although the deaths from tuberculosis have come down considerably
in recent years there is still much room for improvement. In this borough
last year two children died as a result of tuberculosis, a figure which is
so small that to make comparisons with it would be statistically incorrect.
But taking England and Wales as a whole it is true that though the child
mortality from tuberculosis has been reduced to about a quarter of
what it was seven years ago, it has recently been stated that it is still
more than five times as high as it is in Sweden or Denmark (where
BCG vaccine is very widely used) or in one or two states in America
(where BCG vaccine is little used). The general opinion, which is
forming with extreme slowness in this country, is that BCG vaccine
can play an important part in fighting the tuberculosis problem. It has
further been stated that while most of our energy and money should
go towards the eradication of all active foci of tuberculous infection,
until this has been achieved we must protect the widest possible circle
of contacts of all forms of tuberculosis with BCG. During the year a
small extension of the use of BCG was, at long last, allowed by the
Ministry of Health by their authorisation of local education authorities
to vaccinate school children just before their fourteenth birthday
(Ministry of Health circular 22/53).
The Public Health (Infectious Diseases) Regulations, 1953
Statutory Instrument 299 of 1953 which came into operation on
April 1 superseded the Public Health (Infectious Diseases) Regulations
of 1927 and the Infectious Diseases (London) Regulations of the same
year. The new Regulations continue to require notification of malaria,
dysentery, acute primary pneumonia and acute influenzal pneumonia
and prescribe the action to be taken in relation to certain of these diseases
in conformity with the present working of the health services.