View report page

32
NOTIFICATIONS OTHER THAN TUBERCULOSIS
The number of notifications received during the year decreased by 106;
1,635 cases of infectious disease being notified compared with 1,741 in 1969.
CONTROL OF INFECTED INDIVIDUALS
Public Health Inspectors visit the dwellings of persons known to be infected
or having been in contact with an infectious disease where advice, surveillance or
exclusion from normal occupation may help to prevent the spread of the disease.
Where necessary specimens from patients or samples of suspected food are
collected and submitted for investigation to the Public Health Laboratory whose
services in this connection are invaluable.
TYPHOID FEVER
Two notifications only were received:
1. A boy, aged 8 years, returned from a ten week stay in Bombay on the
2nd October. On the 5th he became unwell and was admitted to hospital.
Typhoid fever was diagnosed on the 8th October. Bacteriological examination
of specimens from his parents proved negative and no further cases
resulted.
2. Mrs. S. returned to this country from Naples on the 20th October, having
attended a wedding party there on the 13th. She became ill on the
5th November and was admitted to hospital where a diagnosis of
typhoid fever was confirmed. Her husband and two family contacts were
all employed by a catering firm in another Borough. These were excluded
from work while specimens from them and four other home contacts were
examined. All were negative and no further cases came to light.
3. Following a routine bacteriological test during a hospital confinement,
Mrs. O. was found to be a carrier of typhoid fever, although this result
was not available until after she had been discharged. She and her baby
were re-admitted to an isolation hospital and all known hospital and home
contacts were traced. Four adults were excluded from work and four
children from school.
This proved to be a rare Salmonella Phage Type 51 about which little was
known but efforts to trace the source of infection failed and specimens
from contacts were negative. No secondary cases occurred.
4. An auxiliary nurse at a hospital in Lambeth was found to be a carrier of
typhoid fever. She lived in another Borough and fortunately had worked