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28
Scarlet Fever.
The number of cases notified was 244 as compared with 245 cases during the previous
year. Fourteen cases were not subsequently confirmed. The actual number of cases was
therefore 230. No deaths occurred.
Return Cases.—This term is applied to cases of Scarlet Fever which occur in a house
within 28 days of the return from hospital of a previous case. There were five such cases
during the year.
Multiple cases in one house—that is, several cases occurring more or less together—are
not as frequent as one might expect. In 17 families there were two such cases, in three families
there were three, and in one family there were four.
Cases of scarlet fever are not admitted to hospital, except at the request of the Medical
Officer of Health on grounds of clinical severity or where home conditions make it impossible
to retain the patient at home. Some preference may be given to children under 5 years of
age.
Smallpox and Vaccination.
Smallpox has not been a troublesome question in St. Pancras for some years. Suspected
contacts have certainly appeared from time to time, particularly since the end of the war, but
prompt supervision and vaccination have prevented what might have become a positive danger
to the borough residents. From 1937 to the present time no case of smallpox has been reported,
nor has a St. Pancras resident been recorded as contracting the disease outside the borough or
dying from this complaint during the same period.
The following figures and curves show the number of births dealt with and the vaccinations
obtaining in relation to such births.
Graph "A" sets out particulars of all births coming within the scope of the Vaccination
Officer, for the period 1937 to 1945 (figures for 1946 are not yet available) including children
transferred into the borough. Of the total births registered in the borough about 26 per cent,
were of children whose parents lived in other areas, full details of which were accordingly given
to the vaccination officers concerned who thereafter became responsible for seeing that vaccination
was carried out.
Graph "B" shows only those children who, although born outside the borough, were
transferred to St. Pancras and duly dealt with here under the Vaccination Act. It will be
noted that of these we secured vaccination in 80 per cent, of the children. I think it is fair to
assume from this that we are securing the same high percentage in the children born in the
borough who continue to reside therein. In other words, we are securing the vaccination of 80
per cent, of our children. This is an extremely high figure, and one well worth noting at a time
when the law has repealed the Vaccination Acts and vaccination after the appropriate date will
no longer be compulsory.
It has been argued that throughout the country generally a bigger percentage of children
have been immunised against diphtheria by voluntary methods than have been protected by
vaccination by compulsion. This does not apply in St. Pancras. In this respect it must be
noted that the figure of 55 per cent, (see table on page 30) refers to all the births which occur in
St. Pancras, including those of persons who came into the borough to have their children in
the many hospitals in the area, and therefore does not represent the St. Pancras children
vaccinated.