View report page

It is thus very questionable whether notification of this
disease is worth while at the present time in a District such
as this, involving as it does very considerable expense, and loss
of time to the private doctors and the public health clerical staff.
There were no deaths from this cause during 1950, and
only 2 during the last 11 years.
WHOOPING COUGH.
This disease again became prevalent, 242 cases being notified,
compared with 42 in 1949, and 201 in 1948. The increase
which started in May, reached a peak in August, but notifications
continued at a fairly high level to the end of the year. The
disease was fairly evenly distributed over the District, and was
not unduly severe in type. No deaths from this cause have
occurred since the war.
While the majority of sufferers were of 5-10 years of age,
there was a higher proportion under this age, and especially
under one year, than in the case of measles. This, of course,
is chiefly due to the infection often spreading before the nature
of the cough has been recognised. Some form of inoculation
is obviously the answer to the need to postpone the onset of
whooping cough until children are older and better able to meet
the strain. Unfortunately, although preventive inoculations are
being very freely given by private practioners under the National
Health Service Act, it has not been possible to place sufficient
reliance on the efficacy of the available materials to justify
official adoption of an immunisation scheme comparable to that
which has been so successful against diphtheria. Fortunately,
curative measures have improved very considerably in recent
years, and recent evidence suggests that an official scheme of
immunisation may soon be practicable.
FOOD POISONING.
During the year 8 small outbreaks of suspected food
poisoning were investigated, but only 6 persons were finally
considered definitely to have suffered from this condition.
Unfortunately, 3 of these were isolated cases which were first
notified from the hospitals into which they had been admitted,
and in two instances the notification was too late to permit
any useful investigation. Both had been infected by S. typhi
murium, as had the third hospital case, a young child who
unfortunately died as a result of the infection. The source of
infection in the latter was not traced, but staphylococci were
found in some sausages eaten after the relevant date.
22