View report page

7
Laboratory Service.
It is true to say that improved laboratory technique has played
a major part in the early diagnosis and prevention of infectious
disease and we in Ealing have a laboratory at King Edward
Memorial Hospital which has given great assistance. The Public
Health Department will arrange for the collection of specimens, e.g.
faeces and samples of suspected food or vomited material, and for
transmission to the King Edward Memorial Hospital laboratory at
the request of a general practitioner.
Certification.
International certificates of inoculation and vaccination must be
authenticated by the local health officer, and certificates are also
regularly given as to the purity and condition of manufacture of
certain medicaments manufactured in the Borough and intended for
export.
When contacts of infectious persons are excluded from work
011 account of potential risk to others, a certificate is provided to
ensure the payment of benefits under the National Insurance Act.
Disinfection.
With regard to the disinfection of library books, recent
investigations carried out in this connection indicate merely keeping
them for three weeks out of circulation is sufficient to kill any germs
and render the books safe. In Haling an additional precaution is
taken in that the books are stored in a formalin box for the above
mentioned three weeks.
Diphtheria.
The first case of Diphtheria to be notified in the Borough of
Ealing since 1951, when there were two notifications, occurred in
February in an adult male. Although no organism was isolated he
was diagnosed as a case of Diphtheria on clinical evidence. One or
two sporadic cases like this appears to be the experience of other
areas throughout England and Wales and it is of interest to note
that the Ministry of Health have written to Local Health Authorities
asking for detailed information about their specific cases, in an
endeavour to add to the knowledge of the epidemiology of the
disease.
Dysentery.
There were 225 cases notified and in 163 Shigella Sonnei was
isolated which showed a marked increase in the figures for 1952,
which were 132 cases notified in 73 of which the Sonne organism
was discovered.