View report page

24
Report of the Medical Officer of Health for 1940.
tested and most of them do so. Should the Re-Schick Test give
a positive result, further immunising injections are given until a
negative result is obtained.
Although it cannot be said with certainty that a person has
been successfully immunised unless the Re-Schick Test is negative,
it is reasonable to assume, in the absence of a Re-Schick Test,
that when immunising injections have been given, the person
receiving them has received benefit from them and is at least
partially immunised. Many of these people have not been retested
because they have failed to attend at the appropriate time
for that purpose. If they had done so, it is probable that a large
proportion would have reacted negative to the Re-Schick Test.
In the absence of this information it is only possible to classify
them as partially immunised.
During 1940 the number of persons who reacted negative
to the Re-Schick Test and can therefore be classified as successfully
immunised was 156. The number partially immunised,
as defined above, was 96.

As shown by the following statement, 6,879 of these have
been successfully immunised and 2,527 have been partially
immunised. In a few of the latter the Re-Schick Test was positive,
but the large majority of them have not attended to be re-tested:—