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per cent of the cases were removed to
hospital. Regarding hospitalisation for
scarlet fever, previous reports have pointed
out that where the home conditions are
satisfactory to give adequate nursing,
admission to hospital is neither necessary
nor always best for the patient and the
general standard of housing accommodation
in Wembley is such that probably fewer than
71% of cases of scarlet fever in its present
mild form require hospitalisation. These
remarks deal only with the patient. With
regard to the public health, hospitalisation
becomes necessary only in unsatisfactory
housing circumstances or where in the home
there is a worker handling food, especially
milk, and where a birth is about to take
place in the family in which circumstance
all possible action must be taken to prevent
exposure to streptococcal infection. A
letter was addressed to the local medical
profession on these lines towards the end of
the year when there was strain on available
hospital accommodation for scarlet fever
cases. In this letter, of course, the
present exceptional circumstances with regard
to the employment of women and to there being
in most houses many more occupants than in
normal times were admitted.
The continued high incidence of
measles outside the usual 2-yearly periodicity
since the war was again to be noted in 1943.
28.