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101
of professional staff, premises and equipment. The Medical Officer
of Health is the Principal School Medical Officer of the Inner
London Education Authority for the area and is responsible to that
Authority for the day-to-day running of the Service.
It is not possible for me in these brief introductory comments to
do justice to all the varied activities of the school health service.
I can only hope to highlight a few features of especial interest.
The generally satisfactory physique of pupils found on routine
medical examination testified to the improved nutritional standards
attained during the past three decades. This improvement coupled
with the availability of increasingly potent antibiotics has no doubt
contributed significantly to the much lower incidence in recent
years of complications following infections of the ear, nose and
throat. Hence the poor attendances at the E.N.T. clinics provided
by the school health service to which my predecessor referred last
year and the subsequent decision to close them following the resignation
in May of the consultant in charge, Mr. Wilson. Thereafter
children deemed to be in need of further attention were referred
to their family doctors through whom adequate arrangements for
consultation could be made. The increasing use of the Audiology
Centre at Braidwood for the investigation of children thought to be
hard of hearing was a pleasing development.
Less satisfactory was the increase in verminous infestation
amongst school children recorded at both routine and special
health surveys undertaken by the school nurses. The de-lousing of
an individual pupil must be accompanied by the inspection and.
where necessary, the disinfestation of the remaining members of
the family. The co-operation of all concerned is essential.
The benefits to be derived from whole-hearted parental cooperation
were well illustrated in the course of controlling two
important infective episodes involving Wandsworth schools.
In February a woman attending the out-patients' department of
St. George's Hospital, Tooting, was found to be carrying virulent
diphtheria bacilli and this led to the discovery that her seven-yearold
son was also a carrier. Bacteriological investigation at the
boy's school revealed the existence of further carriers. A letter to
the parents of all the pupils at risk seeking their consent to a
diphtheria immunization booster shot produced a 94% response in
favour of this additional protection. 444 children and all the
appropriate members of the staff of the school received a boosting
injection. The scale of the epidemiological investigation which
resulted in the detection, isolation and treatment, in all, of nine
diphtheria carriers involving four different families is indicated by
the 3.280 nose and throat swabs taken by health visitors and school
nurses from 787 persons. No praise is too high for their