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SMALLPOX
No cases of smallpox were notified during the year although the advice of the Medical
Officer of Health was sought by general practitioners in some instances where the disease was
suspected.
Notifications are occasionally received from port and airport authorities of persons
coming into the borough who may have been in contact with smal lpox. Observation is kept on such
persons by officers of the Health Department for the necessary period.
The number of persons successfully vaccinated or revaccinated against smallpox at the
Council's clinics and by general practitioners during the year was 2,679.
TYPHOID
During the year three incidents involving typhoid occurred.
One, a native of Pakistan recently returned from that country, developed symptoms 10 days
after arrival here, and was found to be suffering from typhoid fever which, unfortunately,
appears not to have been typed. This case was regarded as having been contracted abroad.
Another, an old lady with a history of bowel symptoms, living alone, developed typhoid
fever, indentified as phage type D.l (of Mediterranean origin). She had not been out of the
country and, in spite of exhaustive investigations, no source could be found, neither were
there any other cases of this type reported in the country at the time.
The third incident, involving two fatal cases, which were not notified, is a matter of
some concern. Mr. R.B. (65 years) was admitted to a general hospital as an emergency, deeply
unconscious from coal gas poisoning (blood level 76% saturated with carbon monoxide). He was
resuscitated and because of his mental attitude, was removed after some 18 days to a psychiatric
hospital for assessment. He developed pyrexia and was incontinent, and was returned to the
original hospital after 11 days with a fluctuating temperature. The P.U.O. continued and some
12 days later a Widal test was positive but no action was taken. The man continued to be nursed
in an open ward in the general hospital. Five days later the Widal test repeated, was also
positive; one day later he died unexpectedly, 50 days after his initial admission.
All signs pointed to his having died of typhoid which had been contracted in the hospital.
The man was under a variety of antibiotics so that the typhoid organism was not, in fact, grown.
Two wards of the hospital were immediately closed, all contacts screened, and case papers of
patients who had been in the ward for three weeks before his admission were scrutinized.
On investigation of suspicious deaths in this period it was disclosed that another man, 78
years old, had had an illness involving abdominal pain and diarrhoea for one week, and who had
collapsed and was brought in from the street. He died 10 days later, two days before the
admission of R.B. A Widal which had been taken was interpreted as positive but no action had
been taken.
As the result of screening patients and staff still in the ward one other case was
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