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10
Certificates were issued by the Medical Officer of Health
during the year to two persons–one engaged in a confectioner's
shop who had been in contact with a case of poliomyelitis, and
the other engaged in a hospital dining room who had been in
contact with a case of sonne dysentery.
Tuberculosis.
It is with regret that I have to report an increase in the
incidence of this disease.
The number of new cases notified during the year was 215
as against 194 for the previous year. There was an increase of
18 in the number of pulmonary cases and an increase of 3 in the
number of non-pulmonary cases.
This total is the same as that for 1934, and only once since
then has it been exceeded, when in 1945 the total was 230.
In the statistical supplement will be found a chart showing
the number of new cases of tuberculosis notified during the
past 20 years.
Tuberculosis remains a very serious menace to public health
and affects largely those age groups which are of the greatest
value to the productive ability of the nation and has a serious
influence on the industrial life of the people.
Although high priority is given by the housing authorities
in re-housing tuberculous persons, the housing position results
in inevitable difficulty in obtaining satisfactory homes at the right
rent for the tuberculous and their families.
The number of deaths from tuberculosis was 33 as compared
with 43 for the previous year.
The Public Health (Infectious Diseases) Regulations, 1953.
These Regulations, made by the Minister of Health, came
into operation on 1st April, 1953.
They are in substitution for Regulations made in 1927, and
correspond with the old Regulations in requiring notification of
malaria, dysentery, acute primary pneumonia and acute influenzal
pneumonia, and in prescribing action, in conformity with the
present working of the health services, in relation to the diseases
named in the fourth schedule.
They amplify, however, the precautionary measures provided
for in the revoked regulations against food poisoning:—
(a) by relating these (instead of to enteric fever and
dysentery, as formerly) to typhoid fever, paratyphoid fever
or other salmonella infections (which includes the diseases
previously known as enteric fever), dysentery and
staphylococcal infection likely to cause food poisoning;