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CHAPTER V.
INFECTIOUS DISEASES.
1. SERVICES PROVIDED, Notification, investigation,
pamphlets issued on the various infectious diseases, exclusion
from school of patients and contacts, advice re milk handlers—
Disinfection — Hospitalisation generally at Hendon Isolation
Hospital, Neasden after 4/7/49, re puerperal pyrexia and ophthalmia
neonatorum, London County Council, re poliomyelitis at Royal
National Orthopaedic Hospital, re smallpox, Middlesex County
Council, Emergency Bed Service after 4/7/49 — Notification of
tuberculosis—Compilation of tuberculosis register—Weekly and
quarterly returns to Ministry of Health and County Medical
Officer — Authentication of travellers' inoculation state — Preventive
medicine, diphtheria immunisation, anti-typhoid inoculation,
whooping cough immunisation (for children about to enter, or in,
Day Nurseries), anti-smallpox vaccination—Food poisoning notification
and investigation — Scabies, arrangements with Royal
Borough of Kensington—Complete bacteriological service available
at Central Public Health Laboratory, Colindale, outfits distributed
from Public Health Department—anti-toxins available diphtheria,
tetanus, scarlatina—from 5/7/48, diphtheria only.
2. A circumscribed outbreak of aeute Poliomyelitis occurred
in the Borough during the year, when 5 cases in all were notified,
4 in August and 1 in December. No comment is felt to be necessary
on this small outbreak.
3. The supervision of contacts landing from ship or aeroplane
called for routine surveillance of 10 persons regarding smallpox, 5
persons regarding cholera and 2 persons regarding typhus fever.
Constant vigilance must be given to persons arriving from infected
foreign areas and this supervision must be given with discretion
and understanding. Many such ask advice on the pertinence of
vaccination for the members of their families. It is always wise
to reinforce previous vaccination at intervals. Vaccination, there
fore, of any member of the family who has not been successfully
re-vaccinated within the last two or three years would be a wise
proceeding. With regard to those who have never, so far, been
vaccinated, however, the advice is given that vaccination should
not be performed unless there has actually been contact with
smallpox and, of course, the position generally is that the person
being supervised has only been a contact or a possible contact, and
is not suffering from smallpox. This advice about waiting for
actual contact with smallpox before vaccination for the first time
applies especially to school-children and those over school age.
If there be an infant in the household under the age of twelve
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