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94
SCARLET FEVER
There were 264 cases notified during the year, a decrease of 55 compared with 1937 and the
lowest since 1918. The attack rate was 1.9 per thousand. The age distribution and seasonal incidence
are shown in Tables 26 and 29 at the beginning of this Section; 229 cases were admitted to hospital
and two deaths occurred. The disease was more prevalent during the first six months of the year,
80 and 82 cases occurring in the first two quarters compared with 43 and 59 during the last two.
MEASLES
As from 1st October, 1938, measles ceased to be notifiable in the Borough under a local order,
as it was made notifiable for the whole of London from that date. It will not, however, be possible
to make true comparisons between figures for succeeding and the past years as under the local order
all cases of measles occurring were notifiable, whilst under the London order only the first case occurring
in a house within a period of two months is notifiable This difference in notification should obviously
result in a diminution of the total cases notified in any given period.
Every two years epidemics of measles occur in London and, as was anticipated, one raged
during the first part of 1938. The epidemic commenced in November, 1937, reached its peak in its
seventh week (middle of December) and thereafter gradually subsided with a sporadic increase in
the eighteenth week (beginning of March) and thirty-second week (middle of June), until it finally
burnt out at the end of July after 37 weeks, although a few cases occurred during August, I give
below figures comparing this epidemic with that of 1936 and it will be seen that the attack rate for
the whole population was lower by 4.63 per thousand and that the attack rates for the various age
groups of children were also lower. Unfortunately, the fatality rate was only slightly lower, 0.423
compared with 0.448, although the actual number of deaths decreased from 14 to 9. The same
population figures for schoolchildren as for the 1936 epidemic have been used as no more up-to-date
information is available.