View report page

64
The proposals necessitated asking the school staff about each
child's progress, collecting samples of his reading, writing and
arithmetic, arranging a visit by a health visitor to ask some
questions about the child's health and development, and a medical
examination at which a parent was to be invited to be present.
The second part of the survey, in which we agreed to co-operate,
was launched during the summer of 1965, and many questionnaires
have already been completed.
Schizophrenic illness after child-birth
In 1962 the Consultant Psychiatrist at Downview and Banstead
Hospitals asked for help in assessing the long-term results of the
hospitals' mother and baby unit, which provides treatment for this
illness. The immediate results of treatment were said to be very
good and the inquiry was intended to discover the later effects on
the mother's health and the health of the family as a whole. For
this, the hospital required the opinion of the health visitor and
it was proposed that a member of the hospital staff should interview
the mother at yearly intervals. For each of the patients from
Downview and Banstead Hospitals, a report on a control family
was required.
The former London County Council undertook to assist in the
work, and we have continued to co-operate during the past year.
Rubella Syndrome
As reported in the British Medical Journal in 1964. snecialist
opinion showed that in a sample of children with congenital defects
following maternal rubella, and compared with a control group of
children, the children with the rubella syndrome have neutralising
antibody consistently higher than their normal cohorts. Dr. Neville
Butler and Dr. J. A. Dudgeon of the Hospital for Sick Children,
Great Ormond Street, asked for assistance in a follow-up serological
study as it was obvious that these findings might have
important practical results and it was decided to follow-up certain
groups of children born in 1962 and subsequently, whether or not
there was a clear history of rubella. Thirty-three such cases were
investigated during the year.
Childhood Malignancies
This survey was promoted in 1961 by the Department of Social
Medicine at Oxford University after publication of work on the
Aetiology of Leukaemia.
During the past year, the parents of five children who died during
1964 have been interviewed by a senior medical officer and
questionnaires have been completed in respect of these cases.
Similar action was taken in respect of five control children.