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92
The Board may also remind the Borough Council that they have
power to provide temporary hospitals, and if at a subsequent date the
amount of accommodation for measles which is available in the hospitals
of the Metropolitan Asylums Board should come to be exhausted, thispower
might have to be utilised.
Stuff' required for dealing with outbreak.
For dealing with this outbreak and properly following up the
information which will be obtained it is essential that each Medical
Officer of Health should be provided with an adequate staff, and the
Board trust that the Council will at once appoint any additional temporary
assistants i medical and other) that may be required.
At the same time, I am to enclose a copy of a Memorandum which
the Board's Medical Officer has prepared on the subject of measles.
I am, Sir,
Your obedient Servant,
(Signed) H. C. Monro,
To the Town Clerk, Secretary.
St. Pancras.
At the same meeting your Council considered a communication from the
Stoke Newington Borough Council calling attention to the fact that at the
present time those children who are above the Infant Class, and who have
previously suffered from measles, are a'lowed to attend the elementary schools
from infected homes, and stating that, in their opinion, this policy is opposed
to public health interests, and that, with the object of asking the London
County Council to reconsider their action in this matter, they had passed a
resolution to the effect that "in the interests of public health the school
regulations should provide that all children from houses infected with measles
should be prohibited from school attendance."
The Stoke Newington Council asked your Authority to support their action
in the matter.
The attention of your Council was called to the following statement on this
subject in the Memorandum of the Medical Officer of the Local Government
Board accompanying the letter set out above.
Itefcrring to the general lines of action recommended in a previous
Memorandum by the Medical Officer of the Local Government Board and of
the Board of Education on "Closure of and Exclusion from School," the
statement proceeds —
"In that Memorandum the serious mortality from measles, as well as from
"diphtheria and from whooping cough, among children under five
"years of age is pointed out, and for this reason it is there recoin"mended
that 'when cases of this disease occur in an infant school,
'• ' there should be no hesitation in excluding children from attendance
" ' who are below the age of compulsory school attendance.'