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DIPHTHERIA IMMUNISATION
Percentage of school
population immunised: 87.2
It is the same with
immunisation or any other interference
which is likely to
damage the tissues.
What I advise people is to
remember the deadly cost of
Diphtheria and to think of this before they exaggerate any risk of
Immunisation being a factor in the causation of paralysis in cases of
Infantile Paralysis.
Question:—Do children get Measles and other Infectious
Diseases at school, or somewhere outside school ?
Answer:—If you are thinking of a family living on a remote farm
in the depth of the country, then I think it only right to say that these
specially protected children are more likely to get Measles and other
infectious diseases when they go to school than before they go to school,
but even this is modified by the fact that the children in any one family
will not be all the same age, so that some will be going to school and some
will not, and the infection may take place at home and not at school.
When you go to urban areas it is quite safe to assume that by far the
greater amount of Measles and similar infectious diseases are caught, not
at school, but outside school and outside school hours.
This, if you begin to think it over, must of necessity be so.
A child is, after all, only about twenty-five hours a week in school,
and for only about forty weeks in the year. This leaves a very great
amount of time when children are meeting one another out of school.
This reminds me of an interesting research undertaken in a large
Infectious Diseases Hospital where it was found that children rarely caught
another infectious disease when they were in hospital for a particular
disease and that, indeed, the chance of their doing so was less in hospital
than it was among a similar group of children not in hospital, and I feel
it is much the same with regard to schools.
Having regard to the fact
that the children are under the
close scrutiny of teachers of
experience; having regard to the
fact that these teachers have
Health Visitors and school doctors
all but immediately available to
answer any questions, and having
regard to the fact that the
ventilation in the majority of our
schools is so good, I personally
believe that whilst no doubt some degree of infection does occur at
school, the great majority of infection is not caught at school.
INFECTIOUS DISEASES
Number of cases notified during 1950
Scarlet Fever 99
Whooping Cough 140
Measles 140
Diphtheria Nil
Pneumonia 20
Infantile Paralysis 5
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