London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972
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Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
Kensington 1955
[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Kensington Borough]
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65
Ophthalmia neonatorum
Four cases of this disease were notified. All the cases
were treated at home and recovered without injury to sight.
Gastro-enteritis
This disease is notifiable in children up to the age of
five years. The number of cases reported during the year was
thirteen. Four were removed to hospital for treatment. Three
deaths of children under five years of age were recorded as
due to gastritis, enteritis or diarrhoea.
Scabies
The number of notifications of this disease during 1955
was fifty-four, which compares with four hundred and sixty-three
in the peak year of 1946.
Tuberculosis
During the year two hundred and eighteen new cases of
tuberculosis were notified, of which one hundred and ninety-three
were respiratory and twenty-five non-respiratory cases.
The following table shows the number of cases added to and the number removed from, the notification register during the year:-
| Description | Respiratory | Non Respiratory | Total | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| M | F | M | F | |||
| On register of notifications on 1st January, 1955 | 793 | 677 | 72 | 94 | 1,636 | |
| Notified for the first time during the year | 101 | 92 | 11 | 14 | 218 | |
| Brought to notice other than by notification | 102 | 78 | 2 | 188 | ||
| Removed from register on account of having - | ||||||
| (a) recovered from the disease | 11 | 18 | - | 3 | 32 | |
| (b) removed from district lost sight of, etc. | 134 | 121 | 10 | 15 | 280 | |
| (c) died | 11 | 9 | — | 1 | 21 | |
| Remaining on register on 31st December, 1955 | 840 | 699 | 75 | 95 | 1,709 | |
The system of investigation into the environmental conditions
of tuberculous patients continued during the year. All newly
notified cases and those cases transferring into Kensington or
changing their address in the borough, have been visited by the
sanitary inspectors with the objects of tracing the source of
infection, preventing the spread of infection and removing
conditions favourable to infection. Particular attention was
given to the home conditions in addition to the dissemination of
advice to prevent the transmission of infection to contacts.
During the year, four hundred and forty-nine visits were
paid to the homes of tuberculous patients. In two hundred and
thirty-four of these, the environmental conditions were such as
to require no further action on the part of the public health
department; in a further eighty-two cases it was found that
the patients had moved away, and in fifty-seven other cases the
investigations were postponed as the patients were away in