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8
INFECTIOUS DISEASE
Table IV in the Appendix gives details of all the cases of
infectious disease notified during the year. The total of 916 is not
so high as that for 1950 which was 1,010, and measles with 434
notifications and whooping cough with 127 accounted for more
than half of all the notifications received. There were no deaths
from measles and only one from whooping cough. There were
196 cases of scarlet fever notified as compared with 96 in the
previous year. The cases were all of a mild type and no deaths
occurred. For the fourth year in succession, there were no cases
of diphtheria in Wood Green, and for the twelfth year in succession
there were no deaths from this disease.
This brief account of the prevalence of the more common
infectious diseases during the year, will serve to show what a small
part these diseases now play in our mortality figures. The table
given below which shows the notifications and deaths, year by year,
from diphtheria, scarlet fever, enteric fever, measles, whooping
cough and tuberculosis during the 24 years, 1928-1951, indicates
that during that period, the fall which has taken place in the
mortality for some of these diseases is quite remarkable.
So far as diphtheria is concerned, the steady fall in incidence
of this disease, with no deaths at all since 1939, and no cases since
1947. is due in very large part at least to the practice of immunisation.
This factor does not, however, enter into the case of any
of the other diseases, with the possible exception of whooping
cough, and here immunisation against this disease has not yet
reached sulficient volume to be expected to have any noticeable
effect on the incidence of the disease generally.
Scarlet fever over the past thirty or forty years has completely
changed its character, so that it is no longer the serious and
dangerous disease it used to be. and it is doubtful whether there
is any necessity to continue to treat it as seriously from the preventive
point of view, as we have always done. This disease, however,
has changed its character more than once during its history,
and there is no guarantee that the present mild type of the disease
will always persist.
Measles and whooping cough continue to occur in epidemic
waves year by year, but the mortality from both diseases has fallen
markedly during recent years. This is in large part due to the
fact that they are now taken much more seriously than used to be
the case, with the result that the complications, which formerly
were so dangerous, are less likely to occur.