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5
of flies and other pests. It is likely that this form of education is more
effective when spread over the year in the form of oft-repeated advice
than it would be if it were concentrated into a few days or a week
such as may happen in a special clean food campaign. The opportunity
was, however, taken at an exhibition held at the town hall in the
autumn in connection with the jubilee celebrations of the borough
council to pay special attention to food hygiene and food handling.
Infectious diseases
Tuberculosis, the most important of the infectious diseases, has
been mentioned separately above and is dealt with at considerably
greater length in the body of the report.
With regard to the more acute infections the number of cases of
measles was very slightly higher than in the previous year (2084 as
against 1940), but by the end of the year an epidemic appeared to be
in full swing. A graph showing this is printed on page 67. There was
again a slight increase in the number of cases of pneumonia (108 as
against 84). Poliomyelitis (infantile paralysis) cases numbered 38,
roughly equivalent to the number the year before. This was in spite
of the summer not being abnormally hot or sunny and in spite of its
being considerably wetter than normal. It has been thought that there
is a close connection between hot, dry weather and the number of
cases of poliomyelitis, but as yet there is insufficient scientific proof
of this. Scabies continued its decline and last year only 22 cases were
notified ; this compares with a peak figure of 654 in 1944. Scarlet
fever showed a decrease after four successive years of increase, and
remained of a very mild type. Whooping cough increased considerably,
the 813 cases notified probably being a record for the borough and
being 24 cases more than the number in 1948, which was probably a
record until then. Dysentery cases increased to 63 and towards the
end of the year the number in the country generally was exceptionally
high, and there was evidence that the wave, which started in the north
of the country, was moving south and had reached London.
For the first year on record there was no case of diphtheria notified
and subsequently confirmed in the borough. The reasons for this may be
multiple, but doubtless one of them, and probably the most potent of
them all, is the protection conferred on children by artificial immunisation.
Thus, national figures recently published have shown that there
were 12,514 cases in children under 15 in 1945 and that this dropped
rapidly to 1,322 in 1949. In the former year there were 493 deaths in
such children while in 1949 there were 63. Analysing this material into
the children who were non-immunised and the children who were
immunised, it is found that the fatality rate, i.e., the likelihood of
diphtheria killing the attacked child, remains much the same over the
years, being 69 per thousand for the non-immunised in 1945 and 67
in 1949, while for the immunised it was only 8 in 1945 and 9 in 1949.
Unfortunately in 1950 national figures indicated that for the first time for
many years the number of children immunised against diphtheria
dropped considerably. This also took place in Lewisham and table 52
shows that 3,091 children under 15 were immunised here as opposed