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93
of Health is the Principal School Medical Officer of the Inner
London Education Authority for the area and is responsible for
the day-to-day running of the Service.
This Report sets out a brief account of the work of the School
Health Service in 1969 and in this introduction, I need do no
more than to review one or two matters of particular interest.
In 99.6% of children attending schools in Wandsworth a satisfactory
physical condition was recorded. This figure does not
now vary very markedly from year to year and compared with the
findings in years gone by, shows an acceptable state of general
wellbeing of school children.
The steps which had been inaugurated in earlier years to improve
the standard of dental health continued under the vigorous
leadership of Mr. A. F. Weedon, the Principal Dental Officer. The
recruitment of school dentists was less of a problem than it had
been in previous years and progress continued towards the goal
of achieving an annual dental inspection of every child attending
a school in Wandsworth. This is reflected in the figures.
The opening during the year of the Tooting Child Health Centre,
with its dual surgeries, has enabled a strengthening of the dental
service in that area to be brought about.
Knowledge of infectious diseases in schools is based on returns
made by Head Teachers on children known to be away from
school for various illnesses. There was an increase in the number
of measles cases in 1969, not unexpected since 1969 was a
"Measles Year", although the increase was less than might have
been expected (500 cases as against 300), and this may well be
related to the start of immunization against measles which has
been dealt with in the general part of this report. There was a
substantial increase in the number of cases of mumps reported,
but on the other hand chicken-pox was much reduced and german
measles showed a very considerable reduction, there being only
97 cases reported as against 931 in 1968; in 1968, however, german
measles had shown a strong increase compared with 1967. There
is a slight recrudescence of ringworm of the scalp (seven cases),
to which special reference is made later in this report, and the
number of jaundice cases was 13 as against 47 last year.
Three illnesses where infection of the throat is a factor, namely
scarlet fever, sore throat and tonsillitis, were considerably reduced
in number, as also was whooping-cough.
During the year, the opportunity was taken to rationalise the
facilities available for the supervision of children with rheumatic
heart disease and for the examination and treatment of children
with ear, nose and throat defects.
For many years, Wandsworth maintained, as part of its School
Health Service, rheumatism supervisory clinics to which could be