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116
Spread of Infection in Whooping Cough.
There is much difficulty in getting parents to realise that the child of preschool
age must be sheltered from the risk of infection as much as the child
attending school. Parents realise that the school child is a potential focus of
infection for many other children, and should be guarded from infection; they fail
to realise that the pre-school child, although less likely to spread the disease, is
less able to resist the dangers of an attack; many parents state candidly that they
send children with whooping cough into the squares and streets during school
hours when "there are no other children about." The continued advice
to parents to look upon a child suffering from whooping cough as a
serious menace to others has drawn their attention to the fact that this
disease is one which should be viewed with more concern than it is at present.
Parents frequently express the view that there is need to educate public opinion
in the dangers of whooping cough and the way in which it is caught.
The treatment of children suffering with whooping- cough in outpatient
departments is viewed by many Medical Officers of Health with
disfavour. Surely some of these children, possibly many of these children,
are still infectious. They travel to the hospitals in public vehicles:
although admitted to canteens now provided by many hospitals, some of
these children are taken into eating-places. There can be no doubt that
the disease is spread in some measure by these practices.
Again when a child contracts whooping cough in hospital or at a
convalescent home surely all such children should be removed in an
ambulance or some other suitable vehicle, not in a public conveyance.
Once a child has been taken into a hospital, convalescent home or any
such place on account of its health, it is a very poor result if the child has
to be sent back home still suffering from disease, even if it is a new one
The job of improving the child's health once undertaken ought to be
finished. If the child falls ill with another disease and this new disease
cannot be treated in the first institution, it would seem only fitting that
the child should be transferred to another institution.
Fortunately the Metropolitan Asylums Board (now the London County
Council) fever hospitals accept patients with whooping cough. Last year
77 children (40 per cent. of the notified cases) were admitted from
Holborn to hospitals of the Board.
Measles.
The notification of measles was discontinued at the end of 1919 but during
1929 I received information of 40 cases of measles. Of these, 11 were notified by
school teachers and 10 by medical practitioners; information of 15 was given by
hospital authorities, 3 by the health visitors, 1 by parents.
Age.
Two were under 1 year, 4 were between 1 and 5 years, 17 were between 5 and
10 years, and 17 were over 16.