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When such information is available, by excluding from school
attendance all children in the affected family who have not had
measles previously, and by insisting on the same precautions being
taken as regards home isolation etc., that are required in the case of
the notifiable diseases, it is possible, in the early stages, to considerably
limit the extent of the outbreaks. Up to the present my only
source of information as to the prevalence of the non-notifiable
diseases has been the notifications which I have received from the
teachers, of those cases that have come under their notice amongst
the children attending school. In the case of measles, such information
when given fully and promptly would probably, in itself, be
sufficient to enable ihe preventative measures above mentioned being
carried out with some degree of success. I find, however, that the
notifications received from the schools, which at the outset were
fairly full, have fallen off recently to such an extent that it has
become useless to continue the measures that were instituted for
controlling the spread of the disease
The work being done in connection with measles and the other
non-notifiable diseases is now limited to the visiting of those houses
in which cases are still being reported from the schools and elsewhere,
warning the parents of the serious nature of the illness, especially in
young children, and advising them on the precautions necessary to
prevent the many complications that follow carelessness or neglect
in the early stages.
If the public were brought to recognise the really serious nature
of this disease, which, as the past year's statistics show, is capable
of causing 6 per cent, of all the deaths among children between the
ages of i and 5 years, much more care would be taken in the nursing
and treatment of patients suffering from it, and more solicitude
would be shown in protecting children from infection, especially
those who belong to the age period in which the heaviest mortality
occurs.
The question of adopting some system for controlling school
outbreaks of the non-notifiable diseases is one that I would strongly
commend to the consideration of the Education Committee,