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73
v.—TUBERCULOSIS.
The Public Health (Tuberculosis) Regulations 1930 came into operation
on 1st January, 1931, their purpose being the consolidation of the Public
Health (Tuberculosis) Regulations of 1912, 1921, and 1924, which were
rescinded, and the introduction of certain amendments relating to notification
and other matters.
The more important provisions of the new regulations may be
summarized as follows:—
It is made clear that previous notification in another sanitary district of
the same county does not relieve a medical practitioner from the duty of notifying,
and it is required that the case shall be notified unless the practitioner
has reasonable ground for believing that it has already been notified to the
Medical Officer of Health of the same sanitary district.
The necessity placed upon School Medical Officers to notify cases
detected in the course of school inspections upon special forms is removed,
and it is now required that these cases shall be notified upon the form provided
for other primary notifications.
It may be noted that the position regarding the diagnosis of Tuberculosis
is unchanged and that a medical practitioner is deemed to have become aware
that a person is suffering from tuberculosis when he has arrived at this conclusion
from evidence other than that derived solely from tuberculin tests
applied to that person.
The duties of the Medical Officer of Health are unchanged. As before,
he is required to keep, and to keep up-to-date, a notification register. He himself,
or an officer of the local authority acting on his instructions, must upon
the receipt of a notification visit and "make such enquiries and take such
steps as are necessary or desirable for investigating the source of infection,
for preventing the spread of infection, and for removing conditions favourable
to infection".
The circumstances under which a person shall be deemed to have recovered
from tuberculosis are defined, for the purpose of the removal of the
name from the register, as follows:—" . . . when neither symptoms, signs
nor other evidence of existing tuberculous disease have been present for a
period of five years in the case of a person who has suffered from pulmonary
tuberculosis, and for a period of three years in the case of a person who has
suffered from non-pulmonary tuberculosis".
In the accompanying Ministry of Health circular 1107, attention is
directed, among other matters, to the functions of Sanitary Authorities under
the Regulations. In this circular the view, stated to be prevalent in a number
of districts, that tuberculosis is chiefly the concern of County Councils is discounted,
and it is emphasized that the effective administrative control of the
disease must depend to a very great extent upon the manner in which local
authorities discharge their duties.