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8
Home Conditions.
When a case of infectious disease is notified the home is visited
by the health visitor, or by the sanitary inspector in certain cases,
e.g., food poisoning, enteric fever, dysentery, or smallpox.
Advice is given as to isolation, disinfection, and home nursing,
in order to help prevent spread to others in the household. An
attempt is also made to identify the source of infection, that it may
be removed where possible.
Early Diagnosis.
Since these diseases are as a rule most infective in the early
stages, it is of prime importance that parents should put children
to bed as soon as they appear " off colour " and call in their own
family practitioner. It is most unwise to take a child with a
rash or a spasmodic cough to a health clinic or doctor's surgery,
where there is high risk of infecting others.
The family doctor may in doubtful cases call in a consultant
from the isolation hospital—or send specimens for examination to
the pathological department of the local hospital.
Routes of Spread.
The infectious diseases are caused by living organisms which
pass from one person to another.
There are two main routes of transmission depending on the
main habitat of germs in the body, i.e., the bowels and the upper
respiratory tract (the nose and throat).
The diarrhoeal diseases (enteric fever, dysentery, food poisoning
and possibly poliomyelitis) are spread by contamination of
food from the bowel, either by inadequate hand washing after
the toilet, flies, or vermin.
The remedy is a higher standard of food hygiene.
The respiratory diseases are spread chiefly by droplets sprayed
out when blowing the nose. " Coughs and sneezes spread
diseases," especially when a handkerchief is not used ; and if used,
not frequently replaced.
Insect borne diseases and water borne diseases are now of
comparatively minor importance in this country, thanks to the work
of public health and engineering pioneers.
Disinfection.
In recent years far more importance has been attached to the
role of the sick person convalescent and healthy carrier in the
spread of disease—and far less to transmission of disease by
inanimate objects, Recent contamination by a sufferer, however,