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Vaccination Bill.
The President of the Local Government Board has introduced into the
House of Commons a Bill "To amend the law with respect to Vaccination,"
of which the chief provisions are:—
1. —That the period within which the child must be vaccinated shall be
twelve months from the birth of the child instead of three months,
as at present.
2. —That the Public Vaccinator of the district shall, if required by the
parent or person in charge of the child, visit the home of the child
for the purpose of vaccinating the child.
3. —That if a child is not vaccinated within nine months after its birth,
the Public Vaccinator shall visit the home of the child and shall
offer to vaccinate the child with glycerinated calf lymph.
Repeated penalties for disobedience are abolished by Section 2, which
reads as follows:—
" An order under Section 31 of the Vaccination Act of 1867, directing
that a child shall be vaccinated shall not be made on any person
who has been previously convicted of non-compliance with a
similar order relating to the same child."
The alteration of the age will probably lead to an increase in the
number of unvaccinated children, as the Vaccination Officers will have much
greater difficulty in tracing migrations from one district to another, and as it
is during the last five years upwards of 18 per cent, of the children born in
London have escaped vaccination.
Other defects of the Bill appear to be that the administration of
the Acts is not transferred from the hands of the Guardians to those
of the Local Sanitary Authority, as vaccination is a sanitary measure of the
first importance, and should be in charge of the same body that has charge
of other sanitary measures, and that there is no reference of any sort to
re-vaccination.
DISINFECTION.
Infected articles were disinfected by the contractor, Mr. Lacy, Town
Mead Wharf, by whom they were also collected.
The weight of the articles disinfected was 1,627 cwt. and the amount
paid by the Vestry to Mr. Lacy was £945 17s. Bd. During the last five
years the Vestry have paid for disinfecting infected articles on an average
£825 a year.