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SCHOOL HEALTH
Vaccination and immunisation
Statistics and details of the vaccination and immunisation of school children,
provided under Sections 26 and 28 of the National Health Service Act 1946
are fully dealt with elsewhere in the report.
Head Teachers continued to co-operate in the distribution of consent forms,
which serve not only to emphasise to parents the need for immunological
protection for their children, but also to remind them that a reinforcing dose
may be due. To minimise interference with the children's school work,
vaccination and immunisation are undertaken at the schools when the
number of children is sufficiently great to warrant this.
Employment of children
Children and Young
Persons Act 1933
(amended by the
Education Acts)
In accordance with the Bye-laws, 436 children were examined and certifi-
cates were issued in all cases certifying that their employment would not be
prejudicial to their health or physical development and would not render
them unfit to obtain proper benefit from their education. Similarly five
children were examined and granted certificates enabling them to take part
in entertainments. It was not necessary to invoke Section 59 of the Education
Act 1944 to prohibit or restrict the employment of any child.
Children in care
The Council has, under the control of the Children's Officer, accommodation
for 65 school children in its five homes. Although the children receive
general medical care from a general medical practitioner, each home is
visited approximately six times a year by a medical officer of the Department
who advises generally on diet, health and hygiene, and examines the children
on admission and annually.
The Department's medical officers also supervise, in the same way, two
homes situated in the Borough which belong to the London Borough of
Barnet and which accommodate 21 school children.
Children in foster homes are under the medical care of general medical
practitioners.
Co-operation with hospitals
The paediatricians at Chase Farm Hospital, Highlands Hospital and North
Middlesex Hospital provide the department with much valuable information,
which enables medical officers and school dentists to be alerted to the
special needs of particular children.
Prevalence and control of infectious disease
Sonne dysentery
All schools are asked to notify the Department immediately two or more
children in one class show symptoms of digestive upset, with or without
diarrhoea. There were no outbreaks of Sonne Dysentery in schools in the
borough; only twelve sporadic cases were reported among ten schools.
Scabies
Forty-nine children were treated for scabies during the year, a decrease in
number from the previous year.
Reporting of
infectious disease
Head teachers reported 370 school children as suffering from infectious
diseases.
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