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The Public Health department has continued to advise on steps to be taken to limit the
spread of infectious disease at homeless families units, particularly Sonne dysentery and
E. Coli infections. The Bacteriological Laboratory of the Public Health Laboratory Service
at County Hall has done invaluable work in examining several thousand rectal swabs.
All new admissions to homeless families units are tested and swabs are repeated on transfer.
Every effort is made to stimulate the residents to a sense of responsibility but in units of
this kind families with satisfactory hygiene may become infected because of the low
standards of hygiene of other residents.
If children are to be taken into care by the Children's Officer from homeless families
units, special arrangements are made to prevent the introduction of infection into nurseries
and other residential establishments. Children under five years of age (and occasionally
older siblings) who are contacts of dysentery or other infections are admitted to a contact
unit until they have outlived the quarantine of the infection with which they have been in
contact. It has been necessary to establish a special unit for these children and the figures
for hospital admission from the unit during 1963 amply justify this policy. For example,
40.3 percent. of contact children admitted to the unit had to be transferred to hospital for
illnesses with which they had been in contact, whereas only 8.4 per cent. of the emergency
admissions from outside communities had to be transferred to hospital for infectious
illness.
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