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It will be seen that the percentage of measles deaths in Poor Law institutions
and M.A.B. hospitals has more than doubled between 1915 and 1924, and that in the
latter year three-fifths of the total deaths in London occurred in institutions for the
poor, showing how close a relationship there is between fatal measles and poverty,
and how considerable an effort had been made to secure hospital treatment for
poor children.
Of the administrative steps, briefly reviewed, there can be little doubt that the
most effective in the reduction of mortality from measles has been the attention to
and nursing of sick children in hospitals or in their homes. Greater attention has
been given to this disease than to whooping-cough, the latter having already decreased
considerably before the war. Owing to the war, conditions were very adverse in the
poor quarters of London and the mortality from measles in particular was excessive
in these areas in the winter of 1917 (before the food supply was brought under control)
and it is probable that, but for these adverse conditions, the reduction in the measles
mortality would have occurred earlier. With the rationing of food and the decline
of the birth-rate, conditions altered for the better, both for the children and the
mothers, and it is to this two-fold improvement, associated with the administrative
steps described, that the remarkable drop in measles mortality must be attributed.