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(f) X-Ray Treatment for Ringworm of Scalp. This
service is still available, for appropriate cases, but none
such have come to our notice during the year.
(g) Speech Training. This service has not
re-opened in 1941.
(h) Foot Clinic. This Service has been used to
a greater extent during 1941 than during the previous year,
largely owing to the return of children from reception areas.
Added to this there is no doubt that residents of Barking
are taking more advantage of the facilities offered.
A comparative table showing the attendances of
scholars at the clinic during the past 3 years is given
below :-
1939. 1940. 1941.
Attendance of O.E.S. Scholars. 284 19 277
(7) INFECTIOUS DISEASES.
During February, March and April of this year there
was a measles epidemic, mostly in the Becontree Area. The
maximum number of cases notified in any one month was 206 in
February. By May this number had gone down to 49 and thereafter
cases were very few.
Coinciding with this subsidence of measles, whooping
cough appeared and remained with us to the end of the year in
a mildly epidemic form. At no time were the cases notified
per month, higher than 39 and the form of the disease was not
severe *
From September onwards a very minor but persistent
out-break of scarlet fever occurred, and again the disease
took on a very mild form. This mildness of the disease
probably accounted for the Persistence with which cases
kept cropping up, presumably because certain children were
so slightly affected that their complaint remained undiagnosed
and they thus contributed to the spread of the infection.
It was thought that a child who had recently returned from
evacuation may have been the originator of the out-break.
No school or school departments were obliged to
close on account of infectious disease.
In May 1941 the Government sent out circulars
stressing the dangers of diphtheria and pressing Local
Authorities to carry out Diphtheria Immunisation in an
extensive manner. As a result of this, numbers attending
Immunisation Clinics rose, and the number of sessions per
week increased from one to nine. 1,370 school-children were
inoculated against diphtheria during the year as compared
with 20 in 1940. Immunisation against whooping cough and
scarlet fever was carried out simultaneously, the number
of children inoculated against these two complaints being
respectively 135 and 339.
(8) SKIN DISEASES.
There appears to be a general increase in the
number of cases of skin disease as compared with 1940.
On the other hand apart from scabies, which is still increasing,
the 1941 figures compare very favourably with
those of 1938 and 1939. In other words one is led to
assume, as I stated in my last year's report, that the
sudden decrease in the incidence of skin disease in 1940
was more artificial than real, and probably due to evacuation
One can only suppose that with the subsidence of air activity
children are returning to Barking, and the figures are again
ris ing.
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