View report page

459
The Tuberculosis After-Care Committee appointed by the
Borough Councils of Hackney and Stoke Newington rendered
valuable services during the year. The address of the Secretary
is 38, Pembury Road, Clapton, E.5.
Medical practitioners in Stoke Newington may be said to be
notifying the disease better than in many districts—for whereas
the number of notifications of Tuberculosis does not much exceed
that of the deaths registered from the disease, in Stoke Newington
they are generally about double. It is, however, probable that the
actual number of sufferers in any year approximates to three times
the number of deaths.
THE WORK OF THE TUBERCULOSIS DISPENSARY IN
1922 IN REFERENCE TO STOKE NEWINGTON.
The following facts show the work done in connection with
the Dispensary, so far as Stoke Newington is concerned, during
the year 1922. The figures recorded on the following page compare
favourably with those of the preceding year. (Vide my annual
report for 1921.)
The number of attendances of Stoke Newington patients were
1,544 during 1922, as compared with 1,437 during 1921. The total
number of Stoke Newington contact cases examined at the Dispensary
was 80.
At the end of the year I ascertained the home circumstances
of the cases of Pulmonary Tuberculosis who were at that time
resident in Stoke Newington, and known to be expelling the germ
of the disease in their spit. There were 40 such cases, and in
12 instances they occupied a bedroom that was shared by
from one to three children under 12 years of age. Altogether
there were 21 children under 12 thus exposed to infection
under specially dangerous circumstances ; for although the majority
of the patients had been in Sanatoria, it is impossible to avoid the
spreading of some infection throughout the night. The infection
in these bedrooms would certainly continue present and active week
after week, and the resistance of the children to the possibility of
the repeated infection was doubtless in most cases lowered by the
poor feeding and housing conditions.