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Personal hygiene scheme.
For the purpose of assisting at medical inspections, each school nurse is allocated
to a group of schools. Each school in the group is also visited by the school nurse
on a rota, in order that she can carry out the inspection of the personal hygiene of
the children. At each rota visit all the children in the school are so inspected ;
each school is visited at least once a term, the schools where conditions are below
normal receiving two or more such rota visits each term. Thus every child is seen
at least three times a year.
In 1935, 1,629,068 examinations of children were made at these rota visits. In
140,755 cases the child was noted as verminous, i.e., in 8.6 per cent. of the examinations,
compared with precisely the same percentage of 8.6 for 1934 and 9.0 for 1933.
In accordance with the desire of the Board of Education, arrangements were
made in 1933 by means of a small index card, to determine the number of individual
children found unclean during the year, thus eliminating the possibility of counting
separately the second or third record of uncleanliness in respect of any one child.
The number of individual children so recorded was 79,557 (compared with 83,207
in 1934, and 91,629 in 1933), figures which represent all those children who were
noted to be infested with live vermin or their ova. About 52 per cent. of the cases
in which verminous conditions were recorded at the rota visits are stated to be
infested with nits only.