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Action by the School Medical Service.—The school medical officer will inform the divisional
medical officers daily of the schools in which the scheme should be put into operation and the
divisional medical officer will instruct the school nurses to visit such schools daily with a view
to carrying out the following procedure:—
(1) The school nurse will obtain from the head teachers of infants’ departments the
names and addresses of all absentees in affected classes and of absentees under 5 years of
age, where the cause of absence is due to suspicious illness or to unknown causes, and (a)
will enter the particulars on special slips to be provided by the divisional officer (education
department). If the divisional office is within reasonable distance the nurse will deliver
these slips in person to the divisional officer on the day of her visit, but otherwise she will
despatch them at once in an envelope marked “urgent” or (b), in boroughs where special
agreement has been reached, involving the appointment of special officers to deal with measles,
instead of informing the divisional officer, the school nurse will furnish the names and
addresses directly to the health visiting officer of the borough council.
(2) The nurse will make special enquiry as to children up to and including 5 years of
age, and as to children in any classes in which cases of measles have occurred, with a view
to detecting any children who may have come to school with possible early symptoms of
measles.
(3) Children discovered in school to present signs indicating the possible onset of measles,
such as coryza or with definite symptoms of measles, must be sent home at once in charge
of an elder brother or sister or some other responsible person. The borough medical officer
will be informed at once and the head teacher will be asked to send particulars of such cases
immediately to the three officers concerned.
In addition to the action taken by the school medical service special instructions have been
issued to head teachers and the school attendance staff to report immediately any cases or
suspicious cases coming to their knowledge.
For the purpose of obtaining the co-operation of the parents the head teachers of schools
in the areas affected will be supplied by the borough medical officers of health with advice leaflets
for distribution through the school organisation.
Under the scheme it has also been arranged that borough medical officers of health
will report to the head teachers any cases of measles occurring in houses occupied by children
attending the County Council's schools, which are discovered by health visitors, etc., or at
infant welfare centres, Sunday schools, etc., particulars of which have not been received and
the existence of which is, therefore, presumably not known at the schools concerned.
In addition, the school nurses will confer with the health visitors of the borough council
who will undertake the visitation of suspicious absentees reported by the school nurses.
The scheme was put into operation during the early part of 1930, and worked very satisfactorily.
Whooping Cough.—There were four deaths from this cause. The deaths in the three preceding
years were 20, 10 and 65. The women health officers paid 99 visits to cases of this disease during
the year. The number of cases admitted to hospitals from Kensington was 8.
On the 7th October, 1930, the Council approved of a scheme to be put into operation on the
appearance of an epidemic of whooping cough, and they resolved to establish two clinics for the
treatment of the disease, one at the School Treatment Centre in Kenley Street and the other at the
Baby Clinic and School Treatment Centre at No. 92, Tavistock Road.
The School Treatment Centres are established under the authority of the London County
Council, but it was ascertained that no objection to the establishment of whooping cough clinics
thereat would be raised provided that the holding of the clinics was so arranged that the sessions
held at the centres for other purposes were not interfered with, and that there was no possibility
of whooping cough patients mixing in any way with those waiting for treatment in other departments.
As whooping cough did not appear in epidemic form during the year 1930, there was no occasion
to put the scheme into operation.
London County Council School Intimations of Infectious Disease.
As in past years, exclusions from school owing to the occurrence of infectious disease in the
homes of scholars have been notified daily by the head teachers of the London County Council
schools. These are checked by the register of notifiable infectious diseases in the Public Health
Department and the sanitary inspector immediately visits all cases in his district which have not
been previously notified.
The intimations of infectious disease from the head teachers are particularly helpful in regard
to non-notifiable diseases such as measles, whooping cough, chicken pox, etc., as early information
enables these cases to be visited either by the sanitary inspectors or women health officers and
allows prompt measures to be taken for proper treatment and isolation.