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(a) To-day, the first procedure is the one which is almost
entirely relied upon. As soon as a case of infectious disease
is notified a visit is paid to the house by one of the members
of the sanitary staff. Home contacts are excluded from
school until the end of the necessary quarantine period.
Notices to this effect are sent out from the Public Health
Department to the head teachers concerned and also to the
School Attendance Department.
(b) School closure is rarely resorted to to-day and on no
occasion was it found necessary to recommend this during the
year under review.
When the attendance, however, falls below 60%, certificates
may be supplied by the school medical officer to that
effect as outlined in Paragraph 15 (ii) of Administrative
Memorandum No. 51, 1927. No certificates in accordance with
this Rule were issued during 1938.
(c) During the holidays the disinfection of each school
was carried out as in previous years. Disinfection of classrooms
was also carried out periodically as the necessity arose.
Much less reliance is now placed in the efficacy of this procedure
for the control of infectious diseases.
Frequent visits were paid to the schools after children
had been removed to the Infectious Diseases Hospital suffering
from diphtheria or scarlet fever. Class contacts were
carefully examined and in a number of instances swabs were
taken for bacteriological examination. Carriers detected in
this manner are promptly excluded. Visits were also paid to
the schools by the school nurses when the weekly returns
from the head teachers showed that any of the non-notifiable
infectious diseases were prevalent. Suspicious cases are then
excluded and every effort is made to space out the children in
the classrooms to the maximum extent with a view to
obviating, as far as possible, droplet infection.